April 25, 2024

• 

The Cabinet approved tax expenditure programs to help create jobs and boost innovation-led growth, the finance ministry said on March 19.

Tax expenditures involve programs that allow working-class people, farmers and fishermen, as well as small and medium-sized companies, to pay less in taxes to reduce their overall burden.

The government will ease eligibility conditions for tax credits for companies that hire women who quit their jobs, due to mainly to marriage, pregnancy, childbirth and childcare.

The latest tax credit is a series of measures to bring stay-at-home moms back into the workforce.

Many South Korean women complain that their careers can suffer due to the difficulty they face in finding jobs after spending extended time away from work to raise children.

The government also said it will continue to expand the scope of technologies that are subject to tax credit to encourage companies to make aggressive investments in such technologies related to the fourth industrial revolution, according to the ministry.

The ministry estimated that the tax expenditure programs could reach 47.4 trillion won ($41.9 billion) in 2019, compared with the estimated tax expenditure of 41.9 trillion won in 2018.

By Ram Garikipati and newswires (ram@heraldcorp.com)