[Editorial] Law on Donations Creates Illegal Behavior

When the end of the year gets close you hear more and more voices complaining about how Korea lacks a culture of giving, at least compared to advanced nations. Circumstances are similar with both individuals and organizations. They say that giving is an indicator of how mature society has become, but compared to advanced nations there are not the same tax benefits that would encourage social giving. The complaints have only taken the public's thinking into consideration, without backing up the practice with formal support.

They say civic groups are calling for a revision to the "donation collection regulation law," and are engaged in a form of disobedience. It shows you how the country has legally blocked the spread of a culture of giving when you realize that law was created in the 50's to keep disabled veterans from extorting money from people. The law currently requires that anyone wanting to organize special get-togethers for donors must get permits from the government each and very time. Regular civic groups go round about the regulations and reduce their headaches that way, but that does not work for purely relief organizations. It takes weeks to get permission to collect donations, and that makes it hard to respond to emergencies and disasters. Furthermore the law even has a clause requiring that the cost of collecting donations be within 2 percent of the total amount received, making it hard to maintain the law and accept donations.

For close to ten years now there have been calls for this law out of touch with the times to be changed, but the government and the National Assembly continue to ignore them. It is really a problem, because it remains unclear whether the Assembly will have the law amended. Legislators need to get to work on it immediately. In addition, there needs to be greater tax benefits. In the United States an individual's donations can result in tax reductions of 50 percent, but in Korea one only receives 10 percent. The law is also clearly inconsistent with regulations on political donations, which allow deductions of the entire amount up to W100,000. That is the situation; are people still going accuse the country of being stingy?

The Hankyoreh, 15 November 2005.

[Translations by Seoul Selection]