At a glance

  • South Korea’s finance ministry and Financial Services Commission (FSC) will meet the heads of the country’s five won-market crypto exchanges on Tuesday, 20 Oct, to hear their views on a crypto income tax due to start on 1 Jan 2027, Yonhap reported.
  • A bill filed on 16 Oct by Democratic Party lawmaker Park Min-gyu would move the start to the second year after Korea first exchanges crypto data under the OECD’s reporting framework. Its sponsors expect that to mean 2029.

Due to attend are Kwon Dae-young, the finance ministry’s first vice minister, and Yoo Young-jun, who runs the FSC’s digital finance policy bureau, Yonhap reported. The exchanges are Upbit, Bithumb, Coinone, DigitalX and Gopax, joined by executives of DAXA, the exchanges’ self-regulatory alliance.

The tax would apply 22%, including local income tax, to annual gains from selling or lending crypto above a basic deduction of ₩2.5 million (about $1,880 or €1,670), Yonhap and Aju Press reported. It was written into the Income Tax Act in 2020 and has been postponed three times.

“Standards for different transaction types have not yet been finalised, and time is running short for practical preparations on the infrastructure side,” an unnamed exchange official told Yonhap, in a translation published by Cointelegraph. Industry groups say tax rules for staking and airdrops remain unclear, Aju Press and the Seoul Economic Daily reported.

Not everyone in the ruling Democratic Party backs a delay. “If we delay again, it’s uncertain when it could be implemented, considering the election schedule,” a party official told Aju Press, in the outlet’s English translation.

What the bill says

The bill’s official summary says domestic exchange users would be easy to tax while trades on foreign platforms would stay largely out of view until the OECD’s Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework (CARF), a system for tax authorities to swap exchange data, is working (bill record; summary). It points to 2029 as the year the United States, the largest crypto market, joins CARF, and says the Digital Asset Basic Act should come first.

Thirteen lawmakers co-signed the bill. The National Assembly’s records show it as received, not yet referred to committee, according to Open Assembly.

The government is still preparing to start on time. Lim Kwang-hyun, head of the National Tax Service, told a parliamentary audit on 13 Oct that preparations were under way to announce crypto tax guidelines by November, Aju Press reported.

Industry pressure

In a survey of 30 executives and experts by the Seoul Economic Daily, 28, or 93.3%, said the tax should be delayed. Of those 28, 39.3% picked 2029 as the right start year. The survey is the newspaper’s own and has not been independently verified by CryptoWatchDesk.

Context

The Digital Asset Basic Act, Korea’s planned framework law for crypto markets, is in its own final round of talks, as CryptoWatchDesk reported on Korea’s Digital Asset Basic Act consultations. In the EU, the CARF-based DAC8 directive has applied since 1 Jan 2026. Elsewhere in Europe, Latvia’s new crypto tax law passed last week.

Related: Sunday’s Asia Ten

Debate on the delay bills is expected to pick up next month in the National Assembly’s tax subcommittee, according to the Seoul Economic Daily. Neither the ministry nor the FSC had published an agenda for Tuesday’s meeting by 11:30 UTC on Monday.

This is not tax advice.

Related: What the exchanges asked for at Tuesday's meeting

This article is for information only and is not investment advice.