NTS data shows big bump in income from oveseas

Korean companies’ income from overseas has increased 2 trillion won ($1.93 billion) on average each year since 2008, according to the Justice Party yesterday.

According to the report on foreign earnings of domestic corporations that Park Won-suk, lawmaker of Justice Party, received from the National Tax Service (NTS) yesterday, revenue surged 123 percent from 8.76 trillion won in 2008 to 19.52 trillion won last year.

Overseas income was 11.44 trillion won in 2009, 12.42 trillion won in 2010, 16.36 trillion won in 2011 and 18.99 trillion won in 2012.

The larger the company, the greater the share of both the company’s overseas income and the annual increase in revenue from abroad, according to the report.

Last year, corporations with less than 1 billion won of annual income had only 1 percent of foreign earnings, while those with 500 billion won of annual earnings had 10.5 percent of their income from overseas.

Those companies that earned more than 500 billion won a year saw their earnings from overseas quadruple from 2.17 trillion won in 2008 to 9.18 trillion won last year.

“By regions, the most overseas earnings came from China, followed by the United States,” said Park. “As the size of foreign earnings becomes larger at large corporations, there should be a special law preventing offshore tax evasion in order to discourage companies from reporting less income than they earn.”

BY KIM JUNG-YOON [kjy@joongang.co.kr]