Tax Revision Plan Criticized as Patchwork After Multiple Exceptions Emerge Within a Week

[Anchor]

It has been a week since the government announced its tax revision plan, but criticism and backlash continue to erupt from various sides. To make the revision plan effective, the government faces a complex situation where it has no choice but to continuously grant exceptions to existing regulations.

Reporter Lee Seong-hoon has the details.

[Reporter]

An apartment complex in Songpa-gu, Seoul.

While some homeowners have shown a willingness to put their properties on the market following the announcement of the tax revision plan, various constraints make it difficult for these to actually lead to transactions.

[Real Estate Agent in Songpa-gu, Seoul: You could say that for homes with a lot of lease period remaining, sellers cannot sell even if they want to. There are many such cases. You can see that there are many people who want to sell but cannot do so because of those circumstances.]

In this tax revision plan, the government announced a policy to temporarily lower the heavy capital gains tax rate for multi-homeowners to increase housing supply on the market.

However, in land transaction permission zones, including all of Seoul and 15 locations in Gyeonggi Province, buyers are required to move in and live there directly within four months of receiving permission.

As complaints continued that it is difficult to find buyers for homes with tenants remaining because of long lease terms, the government is belatedly considering extending the grace period for the actual residency obligation for rented houses within permission zones until 2028.

This means the government is tampering once again with the actual residency obligation regulations, which it had already postponed once until the end of the year ahead of the heavy capital gains tax enforcement for multi-homeowners last May.

The same applies to single-homeowners who do not reside in their properties.

Amid strong backlash over the residency recognition requirements, authorities are discussing additional recognitions for cases such as taking care of grandchildren and expanding the scope of the three-year residency recognition period.

The abolition of carryover limits and the reduction of contract periods for Individual Savings Accounts (ISAs) are also being reviewed for supplementary adjustments.

[Kim Woo-chul / Professor of Taxations at University of Seoul: Because criticism is following, the government is in a shape of increasing exception clauses, and if exceptions continue to be added, it really becomes impossible to know why this was done in the first place. This inevitably leads to a significant weakening of trust in government policies.]

With corrections and supplementary measures continuously required just a week after the announcement, criticism is rising that the preparation was insufficient.

The ruling party and the government plan to collect opinions until the end of this month and finalize the tax revision plan.

(Video Editing: Kim Jong-mi, VJ: Jeong Han-wuk)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.