The National Assembly late Wednesday passed legislation that authorizes the government to impose taxes on religious leaders who have been exempt from taxation since the establishment of the South Korean government in 1948.

Nearly 50 years after repeated and failed attempts to revise the law, lawmakers managed to add religious workers to the taxable list despite vehement opposition from South Korea’s big churches, one of the most influential voting groups in Korea’s conservative bloc. 

Korea is the only country that exempts religious leaders from taxation among the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development members. 

But the prospects of implementing the bill remain to be seen as the big church groups and religiously conservative lawmakers continue to oppose the tax scheme. 

Mindful of the opposition, lawmakers decided to implement the law from 2018, a year after the 2016 general elections and 2017 presidential election. They also decided to exempt religious organizations from taxation and provide them with wider tax benefits than given to average taxpayers.

For example, a religious leader whose annual income is less than 400 million won ($344,000) can enjoy an 80 percent tax credit. Their spending on student loans, food expenses and travel costs are classified as nontaxable income. The tax rate ranges from 6 to 38 percent depending upon their income brackets.

But some Korea’s big churches dismissed the legislation as a “premature” move that neglects to acknowledge that most churches are struggling to finance their organization during the economic downturn.

“(The government) should make churches voluntarily pay their taxes, as opposed to enacting a law that forces churches to pay,” said the Christian Council of Korea, one of Korea’s biggest church associations, in a statement released Wednesday.

While urging the government to forgo implementation, the CCK threatened to launch an “anti-campaign” during the 2017 general election against those lawmakers endorsing the move. In a vote during Thursday’s plenary session, 195 lawmakers approved the bill, while 20 opposed and 50 abstained.

Faced with pressure, some lawmakers who enjoy popularity among Christian groups upped their opposition. The coalition of lawmakers from the ruling Saenuri Party and main opposition New Politics Alliance for Democracy voiced their concerns over the negative impacts of the taxation scheme.

Highlighting that Korean Protestants were the main supporters of the Saenuri Party in the past elections, Rep. Lee Jae-oh, who also works as a deacon in his church, asserted that the government should push for implementation after his party wins the 2017 and 2018 elections.

Other Saenuri Party members hinted at the possibility the administration who took power after 2018 would scrap the legislation. Rep. Kang Suk-hoon noted that the Assembly would revisit the bill unless the general public reaches consensus on the bill.

Rep. Lee Seok-hyun of the NPAD, vice speaker of the Assembly, went as far as to say that “if we as religious people, try to impose taxes on money that we have given to Jesus and Buddha, how could we see their face after we die?” 

According to a survey by local pollster Mono Research in November 2014, 75.3 percent of respondents said that the government should impose taxes on religious leaders. Since 1994, religious figures in Catholic churches have paid taxes. Buddhist temples and most Christian churches have agreed with the move. 

By Yeo Jun-suk (jasonyeo@koreaherald.com)