Corporate tax payments made by South Korea's 10 biggest business groups rose slightly in 2016 from a year earlier due mainly to robust earnings by Samsung Electronics Co. amid surging semiconductor and display panel sales, data showed Sunday.

The business groups, which encompass 87 companies, paid 9.82 trillion won ($8.68 billion) in corporate taxes last year, up 2.5 percent, or 239 billion won, from 9.58 trillion won the previous year, according to the data by market researcher Chaebul.com.

Samsung Group paid 4 trillion won last year, up 39.1 percent from a year earlier.

Samsung Electronics took the lion's share with 3.14 trillion won. The figure is more than 1 trillion won from the previous year.

The world's biggest smartphone and memory chip producer recorded 14.7 trillion won in pretax earnings last year.

On-year corporate tax payments by GS Group also jumped 203.5 percent last year to 163 billion won.

The comparable figures for Hanwha Group, Lotte Group and POSCO Group were 223 billion won, up 68.6 percent, 700 billion won, up

25.3 percent, and 468 billion won, up 23.7 percent, respectively.

Corporate tax payments by SK Group and Hyundai Automotive Group, meanwhile, declined 63.8 percent and 19.4 percent to 820 billion won and 2.34 trillion won, respectively.

Hyundai Motor Co. paid 841 billion won in corporate taxes last year, down 32.4 percent from a year earlier.

Its sister company Kia Motors Corp. paid 381 billion won in corporate taxes last year, down 26.7 percent from the previous year.

Corporate tax payments made by SK hynix were 307 billion won last year, down 68.8 percent from a year earlier.

SK Telecom Co. paid 346 billion won in corporate tax last year, which is 4.7 percent less than the previous year.

The comparable figures for Lotte Shopping Co. and Lotte Confectionery Co. were 110 billion won and 17 billion won, respectively, down 16.5 percent and 23.7 percent from the previous year.

Korean Air Lines Co., Samsung SDI Co., Samsung Heavy Industries Co. and 11 other companies paid no corporate taxes last year as they were in the red. (Yonhap)