Choo Mi-ae asks the ruling party for 15 more points of Gyeonggi's consumption tax

Fifteen points is the size of the consumption tax request, and against a rate currently set at 25.3% that is a 59% increase in what the line yields the province ^[2][1]. Choo wants it phased in ^[2]. The corporate tax request is the smaller number: five won in every hundred collected, one won for every nineteen the state keeps under the split she described ^[5][2].

The consumption tax rate already exists and already has a number attached to it, while a corporate tax share for local governments would have to be built from scratch, and it would tie provincial infrastructure budgets to company profits. "If revenue does not come in on a reasonable basis even as companies grow, it is hard even to maintain and manage such infrastructure, let alone contemplate building new facilities," Choo said at the provincial government's northern office building in Uijeongbu on the 21st ^[6][4].

In the account published by en.sedaily.com, what she said the money would build is industrial complexes, road and transit corridors and other infrastructure to support corporate growth ^[5]. She did not name an industry or a project.

The welfare shortfall hits in October, and a staged increase in a tax rate arrives in future budget years. Gyeonggi's essential welfare budget is funded only through September, which leaves three of the year's twelve months, a quarter of the budget year, without money ^[7][3]. "If we cannot secure new funds, school meals for children, care for older adults and programs for vulnerable groups and people with disabilities will have to stop one by one," Choo said ^[8].

She also rejected the charge that she is the one doing the cutting. "What the current Gyeonggi provincial government is doing is by no means cutting or scrapping sound programs. It is a struggle to somehow revive programs that were already set to halt," she said ^[9]. The two had clashed in public after she cut budgets including funding for the province's DMZ International Documentary Film Festival, and Kim said then that she had broken an agreement ^[13].

Kim's answer widened the question. "Gyeonggi Province has raised these points with an awareness of problems in local finance in general, not just the province's own particular fiscal situation," he said, adding: "We will carefully consider how the general issues relate to the specific circumstances and discuss the matter at the party level to find a direction" ^[11][12]. Every metropolitan and local government in the country sits inside that description, and the 15 points would have to be divided among all of them.

I would expect the 25.3% rate to move before the corporate tax share does, because the party only has to pick a number and a start year for the first and has to build the second from nothing. The counter-case is that a corporate tax transfer is the easier sell precisely because it can be presented as a national formula for all local governments, and Kim's own framing points there ^[11]. Two outcomes would show the first read wrong: a one-off central transfer that covers Gyeonggi's fourth quarter and leaves 25.3% untouched, or a party position that opens on corporate tax and treats the consumption rate as next year's problem.