[THE INVESTOR] The nation’s ratio of income tax revenue to gross domestic product has been rising at a fast pace in recent years largely due to the increasing number of taxpayers, data showed on June 20.

The country’s revenue from earned income and global income tax came to 36.8 trillion won (US$31.4 billion) in 2014, accounting for 2.48 percent of the overall tax revenue of 1,485.1 trillion won, according to the report based on data from the Finance Ministry and the National Tax Service.

Earned income tax is paid mostly by wage workers, and global income tax by those who run one-man operations.

The ratio, which stood at a mere 1.63 percent in 2004, rose to 2.15 percent in 2012, breaching the 2 percent mark for the first time, before surging to 2.3 percent in 2013.

The rise in the ratio means that the tax burden of wage earners and self-employed people has grown at a faster rate than that of the country’s economy, said professor Seong Myung-jae, who authored the report and teaches economics at Hongik University in Seoul.

(theinvestor@heraldcorp.com)