Ruling Party and Government Lean Toward Easing Restrictions for Non-Resident Single-Home Owners

[Anchor]

The Democratic Party and the government held a high-level consultation meeting today (August 23) to coordinate real estate policies. The ruling party and the government reached a consensus to broaden the scope of recognized "actual residency" for single-home owners who do not actually live in their properties. As criticism mounted that the government's plan to tighten taxation on non-resident single-home owners was excessive, the party voiced the need for complementary measures.

For our first report, Reporter Ha Jeongyeon has the details.

[Reporter]

Held this morning, the high-level consultative meeting—the first of its kind since Democratic Party Leader Kim Min-seok took office—focused on the government's tax reform bill and metropolitan housing supply measures.

Leader Kim first brought up the issue of heavier tax burdens on non-resident single-home owners, emphasizing the need to expand exceptional cases.

[Kim Min-seok / Democratic Party Leader: I believe we need to broadly recognize various, unavoidable reasons for non-residence in reality, ensuring there are no blind spots.]

He also pointed out that deliberation is necessary regarding government proposals, such as reducing the basic comprehensive real estate holding tax deduction for non-resident single-home owners.

Prime Minister Han Sung-sook and Chief of Staff to the President Kang Hoon-sik responded that they would fully gather public opinion.

[Kang Hoon-sik / Chief of Staff to the President: (The tax reform proposal) is not a unilateral announcement of a finalized policy, but rather the presentation of a starting point to listen to the public's opinions.]

Following nearly two and a half hours of closed-door discussions, the ruling party and the government announced that a consensus was formed to prioritize expanding exemptions for single-home owners who reside elsewhere due to unavoidable reasons.

Under the existing government proposal, while increasing the capital gains and holding tax burdens for non-resident single-home owners, exceptions are made for reasons such as schooling, job relocation, or medical treatment to count as residency periods for up to three years.

However, as demands poured in to increase the recognized exceptional reasons, such as child-rearing or family care, they decided to accept these requests.

The Democratic Party also stated that it strongly requested the government to eliminate the distinction between resident and non-resident single-home owners regarding the comprehensive real estate holding tax—provisions in the government plan that differentiated the basic tax deduction amount for single-home owners, setting it at 1.4 billion won for actual residents and 900 million won for non-residents.

[Park Sung-jun / Senior Spokesperson for the Democratic Party: Since the party made a strong request, you can probably roughly predict how the future course of discussions will unfold.]

Such demands for revision by the Democratic Party are analyzed to stem from the assessment that tightening regulations on non-resident single-home owners is a major cause of negative public sentiment regarding real estate policies, including the decline in the president's approval rating.

The ruling party and the government also announced that there were discussions regarding the upper limit of the comprehensive real estate holding tax and the fair market value ratio. They plan to submit a revised tax reform bill to the National Assembly on September 3, following final coordination.

(Photo: Yonhap News)
(Reported by Ha Jeongyeon | Video by Cho Chundong and Shin Donghwan | Video Editing by Park Sunsu)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.