The government has begun gathering views on taxing virtual assets as calls mount for another delay ahead of the levy's scheduled start in January. Industry officials asked for clearer tax standards and a preparation period to build reporting systems, while experts called for changes that address fairness and ease of compliance.
The Ministry of Economy and Finance said First Vice Minister Kwon Dae-young held a meeting on virtual asset taxation on the 20th at the PPS Hall of the Seoul Regional Procurement Office, joined by the Financial Services Commission, crypto industry representatives and outside experts.
Industry participants included exchange operators Dunamu, Bithumb, Digital X, Coinone and Streami, as well as the Digital Asset eXchange Alliance (DAXA) and Tiger Research.
Park Hun, a professor at the University of Seoul who gave the opening presentation, outlined the main issues in taxing virtual assets, practices in other countries and cross-border information exchange, and laid out what to weigh under either proceeding with the tax or delaying it again. "Major economies including the U.S., the U.K. and Japan already tax virtual assets, but in Korea the levy has been postponed three times since the tax rules were created in 2020," Park said. "We need to think about a comprehensive roadmap for introducing a reasonable tax system and letting it take hold."
Industry participants said clearer standards were needed. "As the virtual asset market develops, trading methods are becoming more varied and complex, so we need clear tax standards to remove uncertainty for taxpayers and operators," they said. They also raised the need for time to build and test systems for submitting tax data. Some asked the government to weigh domestic market conditions alongside the global policy environment, including tax fairness with users of overseas exchanges.
Experts said the priority was credibility. "What matters is setting fair and reasonable tax standards that taxpayers can agree with and accept," they said. Because the market and the regulatory landscape have changed significantly since the tax rules were legislated at the end of 2020, they said changes stemming from the digital asset framework act now under discussion should also be taken into account. They recommended spelling out tax standards for specific transaction types such as staking, and reviewing supporting measures including loss carryforward deductions and simpler filing.
Kwon said the principle of taxing income wherever it arises should be respected. "For that principle to take root properly in the market, tax infrastructure and market discipline need to be in place together," he said. "We will conduct a comprehensive review of how prepared we are, including conditions for cross-border information exchange, tax standards by transaction type and ease of filing."