Top 5th of self-employed makes 37 times that of bottom 5th
The income gap between the upper 20 percent of self-employed taxpayers and the lower 20 percent of this same group widened more than twofold between 1998 and 2004. In 2004, the upper 20 percent of self-employed workers earned 69.6 percent of the total income for this economic sector, according to a report by the National Tax Service and submitted to Rep. Moon Seok-ho of the ruling Uri Party. In contrast, the lower 20 percent of self-employed individuals earned only 1.9 percent of the total income for this taxpayer bracket. The upper 20 percent of self-employed workers thus earned 36.6 times more than the lower 20 percent. The data put into concrete numbers the rapid increase in income disparity following the 1997-98 financial crisis. In 1998, the upper 20 percent of the self-employed earned 61.6 percent of the total income of this sector, while the lower 20 percent earned 3.5 percent of the total, a 17.6-fold difference. In the case of salaried workers, the upper 20 percent earned 39 percent of the total income for this group in 2004, while the lower 20 percent earned 8 percent of the total.Rep. Moon said, "More than 50 percent of salaried workers are exempt from income tax," and thus excluded from the National Tax Service figures, "which means that economic polarization is more severe than the figures suggest," he said. He urged the government not to focus on tax cuts in order to quell economic polarization, citing that such measures only benefit high-income taxpayers.
