hankyoreh

By Seo Bo-mi, staff reporter

There are more than 100 children who are legally registered as company presidents who make millions of won each month and even make National Health Insurance Service payments, government documentation shows. A considerable number of these cases look like attempts to dodge insurance premiums by falsely reporting income and evading inheritance taxes.

According to documents that Kim Jae-won, representative for the Saenuri Party (NFP) on the National Assembly’s Health and Welfare Committee, received from the National Health Insurance Service (NHIS) on Sept. 9, 107 people less than 15 years of age were enrolled as company presidents in the national insurance program in 2013. Their average monthly salary was 3.02 million won, and their average monthly health insurance premium was 88,000 won.

Twenty members of this group were making more than 5 million won a month, which puts them in the top 30% (earning more than 5.39 million won) of all people enrolled in workplace health insurance. The person with the highest salary was a four-year-old from the Seongdong District of Seoul who was making 14.11 million won a month and paying 416,000 won in national insurance payments. The youngest workplace health insurance enrollee was a three-year-old living in the Gangbuk District of Seoul with a monthly salary of 5.33 million won.

The majority of these children are registered as running private companies involved in real estate rentals. The greatest number of workplaces were found in the Gangnam District of Seoul (18), followed by Mapo District (7), Songpa and Dongjak districts (6), and Seocho District (5).

In some of these cases, high-income earners were found to be dodging their health insurance premiums by registering their children for workplace health insurance as company presidents and then underreporting their income.

“Minors are enrolled in workplace health insurance as company presidents when there are special reasons that the business cannot be run under the parents’ names or when they are inheriting or being given real estate. The National Health Insurance Service has to carefully monitor and supervise such cases to prevent these individuals from failing to report their income or by reporting less than they are actually earning in an attempt to dodge their health insurance premiums,” said Kim.

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