The Korea Herald

지나쌤

Big firms dodge pension payments

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Published : Sept. 19, 2011 - 20:12

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Large corporations have been caught making downscaled reports of their workers’ salaries to evade national pension premiums.

Workplaces are mandated to cover half of their workers’ national pension premiums. They have reduced more than 100 billion won ($92.5 million) every year, the Board of Audit and Inspection reported to Rep. Choi Young-hee of the main opposition Democratic Party on Monday.

The report compared 37 large companies including Samsung LED, Samsung Mobile Display, Samsung Electronics, Hyundai Construction and LG Display’s reported salaries to the National Tax Service and the National Pension Service from 2007-09.

The state auditors found that the average salary of 154,427 workers of large companies filed at the NPS was 1.5 million won. But according to a separate salary report to the NTS, which has the authority to impose heavy penalty in case of tax evasion, the amount jumps to 2.4 million won, about 40 percent higher.

“The total amount of unreported pension payments was estimated at 1.3 billion in 2008 and 1.4 billion in 2009,” Choi said. The inspection authorities have ordered the NPS to review the NTS report and collect underreported premium.

At the National Assembly’s annual audit into administrative affairs, the NPS has come under fire for slack management of subscribers’ income information.

Rep. Son Sook-mee said that among those exempted from the mandatory national pension subscription because they have no nominal income, 22,000 people owned expensive imported cars and 48,000 have traveled abroad more than four times in the past three years. Those reported to have lost jobs or failed in business are excused from subscription.

The number of false filers has been increasing every year but when the NPS tried to renew the list recently, 77 percent of them were unreachable.

“They are obviously evading pension premiums, which could be a serious misdemeanor, possibly subject to penalty. The NPS should induce individuals to make exact reports about their incomes and monitor their status,” Son said.

By Bae Ji-sook (baejisook@heraldcorp.com)