Bill 2221923, introduced Friday by Park Min-gyu and 13 co-sponsors, would replace the January 1, 2027 start date with the second year after Korea first exchanges crypto transaction data under the OECD framework. The government has announced no postponement.
Fourteen South Korean lawmakers have proposed replacing the fixed start date of the country's crypto income tax with one that depends on an international data-sharing timetable. Bill 2221923, an amendment to the Income Tax Act introduced on Friday, would move the start from January 1, 2027 to January 1 of the second year after Korea first exchanges crypto-asset transaction data internationally under the OECD's Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework.
The lead proposer is Park Min-gyu of the Democratic Party of Korea, joined by 13 co-sponsors, 12 from his own party and one from the Rebuilding Korea Party. The legislative record lists the bill as received, with introduction the only stage logged, so none of it is law and no committee is recorded against it yet.
Under current law, income from transferring or lending virtual assets is taxed as other income on a separate schedule from January 1, 2027. crypto.news reported the rate as 22% combined, a 20% national income tax plus local income tax, on qualifying income above an annual basic deduction of 2.5 million won. The bill would also move the reference date used to calculate acquisition cost, which decides how much of a disposal counts as gain.
The 2029 date attached to the bill in coverage of it is a consequence of the bill's trigger, not a term written into it. Because the start depends on when the first exchange of data happens rather than on a year set in the statute, the bill does not itself fix how long the delay runs. A first exchange in 2027 would put the tax at January 1, 2029. If the exchange slips, the tax slips with it.
The stated reasons are about collection rather than rates. The bill argues that taxing crypto before the government's data-collection and tax administration is ready would weaken enforcement and confuse taxpayers, and that transaction data from overseas exchanges is hard to obtain until the reporting framework is running. It notes that the United States is expected to join that framework in 2029. From there it reaches the fairness point: users of domestic exchanges, whose records the tax office can already see, would carry a disproportionate share of the burden. It also argues that the Digital Asset Basic Act, Korea's general framework for the crypto market, should be enacted before taxation starts.
Senior officials are due to meet the exchanges separately. Cointelegraph and crypto.news, both citing Yonhap, reported that Kwon Dae-young, first vice minister of finance and economy, and Yoo Young-jun, the Financial Services Commission's director general for digital financial policy, are expected to sit down on Tuesday with Upbit, Bithumb, Coinone, DigitalX and Gopax, along with executives of the Digital Asset Exchange Alliance. Korean exchanges lost their discretion over withdrawals in April under anti-phishing rules.
An exchange official told Yonhap on Sunday that standards for different transaction types had not been finalized and that the industry shared a view favoring a postponement, according to Cointelegraph. crypto.news reported that exchanges say the treatment of staking, airdrops, hard forks and DeFi activity remains unclear, and that the National Tax Service is preparing guidance expected around November.
None of that is a decision. crypto.news reported that Finance Minister Lee Hyoung-il said on October 6 that the government would gather views from affected groups before proceeding, and neither account records any announced postponement. Cointelegraph reported that the tax has already been delayed three times. A consultation held more than two months before the start date is consistent with either outcome, and a bill sitting at introduction establishes only that 14 members of the National Assembly have asked for the change.
Korea has settled other crypto questions faster than this one. The central bank governor told lawmakers this month that the Bank of Korea will not issue stablecoins itself, and other jurisdictions have kept moving on crypto taxation while Korea's start date has slipped, with Greece putting a 10% gains tax out for consultation this month. What this bill disputes is not the rate but whether the tax office will be able to see the transactions the rate would apply to.
