South Korea Targets 2029 for Its 22% Crypto Tax, 2027 Still Law

South Korea is converging on a fourth postponement of its tax on crypto gains, and 2029 is the target date in every account read on Thursday. The levy is 22%, a 20% national income tax plus a 2% local surcharge on two of the three accounts, charged on annual gains above 2.5 million won. It was first due in 2022 and has been put off three times since. Nothing has changed in the statute. The 1 January 2027 start is still the law, and moving it needs the National Assembly to amend the Income Tax Act. Who is driving the delay is where the accounts part company.

Two accounts of the finance minister

Cointelegraph reported on Thursday that the government has backed the postponement, and that Finance Minister Lee Hyoung-il announced the proposal himself and said the ministry would consult lawmakers. CoinDesk, writing a day earlier, says the opposite of the same man: that he "has backed starting on schedule". Both cannot describe his position as of Thursday, and we could not establish which supersedes which. Reporting from 26 October puts him between the two, gathering views from parliament, experts and industry at an audit on 6 October. One further discrepancy is cosmetic. His name is Lee Hyoung-il in two accounts and Lee Hyung-il in the third. It is the same person.

Where the 2029 date comes from

The year is not a round number picked for convenience. It is when the United States is scheduled to begin exchanging crypto tax data under the OECD's Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework, the cross-border standard for passing crypto account data between tax authorities. On one account's reading of the OECD timetable, South Korea, Japan and the United Kingdom start in 2027, Singapore, Switzerland and Hong Kong follow in 2028, and the United States comes last. The argument for waiting is that taxing earlier lands the burden on customers of domestic exchanges, because offshore trading is harder for the tax office to see. An unnamed official told Newsis that nearly half the crypto market is American, a figure that appears in one outlet only and stands unverified. Hong Kong legislated its own side of the same framework this week, with data collection from 2027.

What the committee wants tested first

CoinDesk reports, citing local media, that members of the National Assembly's Strategy and Finance Committee agreed on 3 November to recommend a deferral, and that it will be taken up when the tax subcommittee turns to Income Tax Act amendments. That decision appears in no other account checked and is reported here on that single footing. The reasons given are all preparation: testing how tax data moves between the National Tax Service and the exchanges, running simulations on real transaction data, and waiting on the General Act on Digital Assets, which the same account expects in the first half of 2027. DAXA, the alliance the domestic exchanges belong to, has asked for a delay.

"Most people seem to be talking about around two years," said Oh Gi-hyoung, a secretary on the committee, in remarks carried by local media.

The December clock, and the bill already filed

This is not the first mechanism aimed at 2029. The archive carries Income Tax Act amendment 2221923, filed on 16 October with 14 sponsors, which would tie the start to the second year after Korea's first qualifying data exchange under the framework. The committee recommendation is a separate step, not that bill. Neither has been voted on. The two timetables in circulation for the next move do not match: the 26 October account expects a final decision by early December, while Cointelegraph has the government submitting amendments during parliament's regular session in 2027 and detailed guidelines in the first half of 2028. Smaller details are unsettled too. The 2.5 million won threshold converts to $1,860 in one account and $1,887 in another, and a rule letting losses offset gains over the following three years appears in one. Until a vote, the taxable year opening on 1 January 2027 is the one on the books.