[Anchor]
The National Tax Service has launched massive tax audits against 41 companies closely tied to the cost of living, including Baedal Minjok, Musinsa, and Pulmuone. The amount of taxes they are suspected of evading is estimated to be around 1 trillion won.
Reporter Chae Heesun has the details.
[Reporter]
The core of the National Tax Service's tax audit into Baedal Minjok is whether proper taxes were paid when profits earned domestically were transferred to overseas shareholders.
Woowa Brothers, the operator of Baedal Minjok, repeatedly purchased and canceled treasury stocks held by its overseas holding company.
The National Tax Service suspects whether these treasury stocks were intentionally purchased at inflated prices.
If they were purchased at high prices or if funds were transferred inappropriately, it can essentially be viewed as a dividend.
When domestic companies pay dividends or interest generated in South Korea to overseas entities, failing to withhold and pay taxes in advance constitutes tax evasion.
Authorities also plan to investigate whether offshore affiliates were provided with free business support and whether value-added taxes were improperly deducted.
The National Tax Service estimates that the taxes evaded by Baemin through such methods amount to 100 billion won.
[Lee Sung-geul / Director General of the Investigation Bureau, National Tax Service: By complexly utilizing capital transactions, they transferred income (to overseas holding companies) in forms disguised as 'not dividends' or 'not interest income.']
The targets of the tax audit also included fashion platform Musinsa and food company Pulmuone.
Two fashion platforms, including Musinsa, are reportedly under investigation for suspicion of inflating costs through omissions in sales, while food companies such as Pulmuone are under investigation for suspicions including providing massive financial support to overseas affiliates without collecting interest.
In addition, including 11 poultry farms that underreported profits worth billions of won, the total amount of suspected tax evasion by the 41 companies caught in this crackdown reaches 1 trillion won.
Given that these companies are closely related to the cost of living, the National Tax Service plans to intensively investigate not only signs of tax evasion but also the process by which the families of company owners accumulated wealth.
(Video Journalist: Lee Jae-young, Video Editor: Kim Jun-hee, Design: Jang Seong-beom)
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