[Seminar] Economic Effects of Inheritance Tax Reform

This seminar examined the reality that the current system, with a top inheritance tax rate of 50%, is causing companies to relocate overseas and sell management control, and discussed the economic effects of inheritance tax reform from the perspective of expanding the nation’s economic territory beyond the simple frame of tax cuts. Yoo Byungjun, a professor at Seoul National University who delivered the presentation, showed through Monte Carlo simulation and genetic algorithm-based analysis that lowering the tax rate would expand the tax base through the retention of domestic capital, the return of overseas Korean-owned assets, and new inflows of foreign capital, and that a balanced optimal tax rate that takes into account both tax revenue stability and capital mobility is derived at about 22%. The discussion that followed broadly addressed various issues, including the conflict between inheritance tax and incentives to enhance corporate value, the need to shift to taxation of unrealized capital gains, the validity of the premium valuation for largest shareholders, and concerns about state productivism, making the event a meaningful forum for exploring the policy direction of inheritance tax reform.

Thank you to everyone who attended.

◇ Date and Time: Wednesday, July 1, 2026, 10:00 a.m.

◇ Venue: Conference Room No. 9, Members’ Office Building of the National Assembly

◇ Hosted by: member of the National Assembly Sooyoung Park, Center for Free Enterprise (CFE), Korean Association of Business Administration

▶ Moderator

- Dongseok Ok, Chairman of the Open Society Forum

▶ Presenter

- Byungjun Yoo, Professor, Department of Business Administration, Seoul National University

▶ Discussants

- Inyeop Ji, Professor, Department of Economics, Dongguk University

- Won Kang, Professor, School of Business Administration, Sejong University

- Seongo Kwon, Director, Tax Policy Research Center, Korea Institute of Public Finance

- Manki Kim, Administrative Officer, Property Tax Division, Ministry of Finance and Economy

▶ Attending members of the National Assembly

- Jeomshik Jeong, Floor Leader of the People Power Party

- Sooyoung Park

- Eunsuk Choi

- Jiyeon Cho

- Seunghwan Cho

- Donghoon Han

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Original title: [세미나] 상속세 개편의 경제적 효과

Author: Center for Free Enterprise (CFE)

Date: 2026-07-01

Source: https://www.cfe.org/bbs/bbsDetail.php?cid=seminar&pn=1&idx=29225