지방재정 운용의 자율성 강화를 위한 지방자치법의 평가와 입법 과제 - 지방자치단체의 과세권을 중심으로 -

초록

For the local autonomy system to truly take root in reality, ensuring autonomy in local finance management is paramount. This autonomy cannot be achieved solely through expanding dependent sources of funding, such as grants or national subsidies. Only through self-funded resources can local finance autonomy be truly guaranteed, and among these, the substantive guarantee of local governments' taxing power is the most fundamental and fundamental means of securing local finance autonomy. Ensuring autonomy in the exercise of local taxation rights—in other words, the legal guarantee of local governments' autonomous taxation rights—is the most fundamental element in realizing local governments' right to self-governance. Through such guarantees, the institutional guarantees of local autonomy enshrined in the Constitution can be faithfully realized and established in practice. However, the current Local Autonomy Act, which holds fundamental legal status among local autonomy-related laws, plays no significant role in guaranteeing local governments' right to self-assessment. Although the fully revised Local Autonomy Act, implemented in 2022, incorporates a significant number of legislative changes, it is difficult to find any revisions to local finances, except for the local finance adjustment system. While revisions to the Local Autonomy Act could have been a more necessary and effective means of addressing the stagnant expansion of local governments' autonomous taxation authority, the legislative reality has not allowed for this. Consequently, this study examines the structure and current status of local finance and local taxes to identify the challenges facing today's local finance and tax systems. Furthermore, it examines the theoretical implications of local governments' taxation authority, the key provisions of the 2022 comprehensive revision of the Local Autonomy Act, the legal status of the Local Autonomy Act within local autonomy-related laws, and the resulting necessity for revision. Based on this, it proposes specific amendments to the current Local Autonomy Act to effectively guarantee local governments' taxation authority as a future legislative task. Specifically, this study reexamines the original basic legal status of the Local Autonomy Act and emphasizes the need to establish a systematic foundation for guaranteeing local governments' right to self-assessment through the reestablishment of the constitutional authorization structure of a three-stage regulatory system consisting of the Constitution, the Local Autonomy Act, and local tax-related laws. Based on this, it proposes the introduction of the principle of guaranteeing local governments' right to self-assessment in the basic law, the legal guarantee of local governments' right to autonomous decision-making regarding local tax requirements, and the stipulation of the principle of supplementarity that should be applied to the exercise of local governments' right to assess taxes and the design of local financial adjustment systems as legislative tasks for the current Local Autonomy Act.

키워드