South Korea's tax office said Monday it will take steps to reduce burden on ordinary taxpayers and small and medium enterprises (SMEs) while encouraging accurate income reporting in order to boost state revenue this year.

The National Tax Service (NTS) in the past few years had collected less money than planned, with the deficit for last year estimated at around 10 trillion (US$9.2 billion) to 15 trillion won. For 2015, the National Assembly Budget Office estimated the shortfall would likely reach around 3 trillion won.

In a gathering of senior NTS officials here, the tax agency said it will help people and companies navigate the complicated tax return filings and even notify rough estimates on how must they have to pay to minimize error.

Last year alone, the office collected 140 billion won in fines and additional taxes.

"The goal is to reduce cross-checking of tax returns and scale back tax audits by 70 percent in 2015 compared to the year before," it said.

The NTX audited some 45,000 people last year. This year's aim is 15,000.

Resources will be focused on finding people who have rental homes and commercial buildings but dodge taxes by underreporting earnings.

To prevent companies from being unduly burdened by tax audits, the NTS said it wants to keep corporate probes conducted this year to under 18,000 cases.

SMEs will be excused from cross-checks on their tax returns, be given more time to pay their taxes and allowed suspension of taxes levied in certain circumstances, the tax office said.

"Taxation policy reforms needs to be carried out with utmost attention to detail so as not to hurt economic growth," Finance Minister Choi Kyung-hwan said at the meeting.

The government plans to use its tax policy to fuel investment, job creation and establishment of new businesses as well as ways to help all economic actors strive for growth, he said.

The tax policy is under heavy fire for changes that likely will end up making salaried workers pay more taxes this year than before.

People in the high income range were not likely to get any kind of tax refund they have come to expect, with some even having to pay more taxes after their earnings and spending figures are tallied in accordance with the tax code revisions.

Choi said the government can consider accepting the tax payments installments to ease the burden.

Moon Chang-yong, the head of the ministry's tax office, emphasized that the revisions had been announced in advance.

"The changes call for the government collecting less money beforehand and giving less after tax returns have been checked," the official said. The past practice has been for the government to collect more during the year and return more after income taxes are filed.

He said that while the tax burden on people who make more than 70 million won will go up, the extra money will be used to help lower income earners through the earned income tax credit (EITC) scheme and encourage people to have more children through more child tax credit (CTC).

The EITC target to help low income earners, while the CTC aims to support people who make less than 40 million won per year. (Yonhap)