This year's national tax revenue is expected to be about 59 trillion won short of the initial forecast.

It's the biggest 'tax punk' ever.

This is due to the weak performance of major companies, mainly semiconductors, and the contraction of the domestic asset market, which has led to a sharp decline in corporate tax and capital gains tax performance.

The government plans to make up for the tax deficit through surplus funds, including the Foreign Exchange Equilibrium Fund (Foreign Equity Fund), world surpluses, and non-use of the budget it has prepared.

In other words, it can respond without a supplementary budget for the issuance of additional government bonds.

The Ministry of Planning and Finance announced today (18th) the results of the "National Tax Revenue Re-Estimate".

This figure also reflects the performance of the interim corporate tax payments that companies have to pay by the end of August.

It is unusual to announce an official tax revenue reestimate without going through the supplementary budget.

The move is interpreted as taking into account the grave situation in which the tax puncture has emerged as the biggest concern for fiscal management this year.

This year's national tax revenue was expected to decrease by 59.1 trillion won to 341.4 trillion won from the previous forecast of 400.5 trillion won.

National tax revenue from January to July was 217.6 trillion won, down 43.4 trillion won from the same period last year.

Considering this trend, it means that a "revenue gap" of about 60 trillion won is inevitable.

This was 14.8% short of the previous forecast, marking the third consecutive year with a double-digit margin of error.

In 2021 and last year, we also had double-digit margins of error due to large excess tax revenues.

Jeong Jung-hoon, head of the Tax Division, explained, "Although the direction is different, it is regrettable that there has been a large error in tax revenue for three consecutive years," adding, "In 2021~2022, corporate performance improved unexpectedly quickly due to the end of the corona pandemic, and excess tax revenue was generated due to the addition of global monetary expansion, and this year, corporate tax and asset tax revenues decreased due to a sharp downward pressure on the economy, starting with semiconductors in a high-interest rate situation in a different direction."

Looking at the shortfall by major tax categories, corporate taxes amounted to 25.4 trillion won, well over 40% of the total tax revenue funk.

This was followed by ▲ capital gains tax of 12.2 trillion won, value-added tax of 9.3 trillion won, comprehensive income tax of 3.6 trillion won, tariff of 3.5 trillion won, and inheritance and gift tax of 3.3 trillion won.

The government's position is that it can respond to the tax revenue deficit with available financial resources without drafting a supplementary budget.

According to the law that transfers about 40% of internal taxes to local governments in the name of local grant taxes and local education finance grants, about 23 trillion won out of the 59 trillion won in tax revenue shortfall will be borne by the local government.

For the remaining 36 trillion won of the central burden, we plan to utilize a surplus of around 4 trillion won, a surplus of about 24 trillion won, and an unused budget of about 10 trillion won.

The size of the unused budget will not be finalized until the end of the year.

In particular, in line with the situation in the foreign exchange market, about 20 trillion won of foreign exchange fund "live ammunition" has been secured.

In order to stabilize the won-dollar exchange rate, which has been running high since last year, the foreign exchange authorities sold dollars and bought won, which reportedly led to an unusually large accumulation of won in the foreign exchange fund.

The dollar has been strengthening lately.

The government's explanation is that the possibility of injecting the won into the foreign exchange market in order to boost the exchange rate has become extremely low, and the need to reduce the interest loss of the foreign exchange fund has been highlighted.

Specifically, it is a plan to use the surplus money from the Foreign Affairs Fund as a general accounting resource by early repayment to the Public Finance Management Fund (Confucius Fund), which is the general account.

Shin Jung-beom, director of the International Finance Bureau, said, "We have sufficient capacity to stabilize the foreign exchange market even after the early repayment of the foreign exchange fund," adding, "In particular, we can inject additional financial resources if necessary because there is a limit on the issuance of foreign bonds in won next year."