The Ministry of SMEs and Startups will be able to request data from the National Tax Service and the Ministry of Employment and Labor for use in drawing up and running support programs for small business owners. The ministry will now be able to obtain data on their income and costs as well.
The ministry said a revision to the Framework Act on Small Business containing these provisions was approved at a Cabinet meeting on Sept. 22.
Until now, the ministry had checked revenue and the number of full-time employees on a business-registration basis, in line with the legal definition of a small business owner, and designed and carried out policies based on that information. Critics said the result was support that did not match the intent of the programs. A "multi-store operator" running several unstaffed stores under the same name could receive support for each store, while a "side-business operator" holding a high-paying job and running an online store on the side also qualified. That has increased the need for the government to factor in small business owners' costs and actual business income when designing support programs.
Once the revision takes effect, the government expects to be able to calculate the number of self-employed business owners while accounting for whether they are multi-store or side-business operators. It also expects to identify more precisely which businesses genuinely need government support.
"This revision is expected to fundamentally resolve the duplicate-support problem that arose from business-registration-based aid, and to allow government funds to reach small, vulnerable business owners more closely and more generously," said Lee Byung-kwon, Vice Minister of SMEs and Startups. "We will continue to link scattered data on small business owners into a single system so that we can keep upgrading small business policy."
