Trade industry against filing bill for inland container tax

The trade industry is crying out against container taxes for which a bill is under way to tax containers in and out of inland container depots (ICD).

The Korea International Trade Association (KITA) asserted that 27 lawmakers, including Rep. Ahn Sang-soo of the opposition Grand National Party (GNP), are pushing to change local tax laws to apply container taxes to inland container depots (ICD) like Uiwang ICD. It also insisted on abrogating the container tax itself, which has only been applied in Pusan.

According to KITA, the container tax was introduced in 1992 under the name of local development tax, through a local tax law amendment. The city of Pusan applied this tax to raise capital as a temporary measure (until the end of 2001) to build detour highways for container trucks. Pusan has imposed a 20 thousand won tax on single 20-foot equivalent container boxes, raising 511 billion won, beyond its expectation of 500 billion won.

Meanwhile, the city of Inchon gave up imposing container taxes by abolishing the relevant law last year.