Korean Job Discussion Forums

[akcrono]

My co-workers all make similar wages as me and have been at the same school for around the same amount of time. They each received around 350,000 each for a refund, while I owe the government 750,000. How can this be?

They said it was because I made a certain amount of money last year that bumped me up into a new tax bracket, but it shouldn't account for such a difference, and my co-workers didn't have to deal with this.

Does anyone know what's going on and/or how I'd be able to challenge this?

[smithy]

Are you an IC? What's your tax rate?

[FriendlyDaegu]

Before you challenge anything you need to find out why your tax bill is different from what you think it should be.

First, get a copy of the year end settlement tax document that your school submitted on your behalf to the tax office. I believe you are entitled to this.

Get it from your boss or from the tax office. There, you'll see what your school (or their tax people) calculated for your income, deductions, tax liability, taxes paid, etc.

From that you should see where the problem or misunderstanding is. I bet it is something like you didn't pay taxes for some year in the past (or they weren't paid for you) and now NTS has found out about it. Or the school is trying to correct a mistake from a previous year. Anyway, it should be on the settlement document.

Good luck.

[akcrono]

[akcrono]

[big_fella1]

[Los Angeloser]

[scorpiocandy]

I know this is a month old but I just got told I have to pay over 1 million. OP I hope you don't mind me asking my question in your thread since it's related.

I'm not an independent contractor. I work at a university and I'm now being charged for working "two jobs in one year". For a job I left in 2010.

The contracts did not run concurrently and they're saying that I should have declared my income in addition to my employer. What do I have to declare? And why? I've never had to do this. In fact, the year they are charging me for, I got 50 000 Won back (others get huge amounts!) and other employees had to pay in.

They're now saying I have to pay the 15% rate because my income was "so big". I got a normal university salary.

Any ideas?

[thegadfly]

akcrono,

While the US has a tax scale with certain "tipping points" and "tax brackets," Korea has a much smoother distribution -- every 100,000 you make moves you up the tax rate a little bit (which varies by amount, gradually increasing, but still fairly linear). The rate at 2 million a month is under 1%, at 3 million the rate is 2.9%, 3.1 million is 3.2%, 3.2 million is 3.5%, and it "jumps" up to 5.3% at 4 million won a month.

See for yourself what you ought to be paying, compare it to what was actually deducted each month, and see if you actually owe money. Sounds like someone in accounting may have made an honest error (by taking out too little each month), or perhaps it was a not-so-honest error...but showing folks what WAS deducted (as indicated on your pay slips) compared to what IS owed (according to the national tax service's own website calculator) might help clear up the mistake.

http://nts.go.kr/eng/help/help_52.asp#none

Scorpio,

You have to earn over 10 million won A MONTH in order to hit the 15% bracket (10 million is 14.29%, and over 10 mill gets a special calculation) -- 4 million won a month is still down around 5-ish%. However, as I understand it, you have a "choice" to either pay according to your earnings, or a flat 15%...and it sounds like someone in the accounting department decided to just declare you were paying 15% because it was easier for them.

Here you can figure out what you SHOULD be paying:

http://nts.go.kr/eng/help/help_52.asp#none

You enter your monthly pay in thousands (so 2 mill is entered as 2000).