"Expanding Recognition of Residency for Non-Residing Single-Home Owners"... Consensus on Revision

[Anchor]

The Democratic Party and the government have reached a consensus that a broader range of exceptions should be granted for single-home owners who inevitably do not live in their own homes. The Democratic Party requested the government to ensure that comprehensive real estate holding taxes do not differentiate between single-home owners regardless of whether they reside in them.

Today's first news, reported by Ha Jeongyeon.

[Reporter]

Yesterday morning, the high-level party-government consultative meeting, held for the first time since the launch of the Democratic Party leader Kim Min-seok's leadership, focused on the government's tax reform bill and housing supply measures for the Seoul metropolitan area.

Leader Kim first raised the issue of tightening the tax burden on non-residing single-home owners and emphasized the need to expand the recognition of exceptions.

[Kim Min-seok / Democratic Party Leader: I believe that various and inevitable non-residency reasons in reality should be broadly recognized so that there are no blind spots.]

He also pointed out that deliberation is needed regarding government proposals such as reducing the basic deduction for the comprehensive real estate holding tax for non-residing 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 bill) was not an unilateral announcement of a finalized policy, but rather the announcement of a starting proposal to listen to the public's opinions.]

Following nearly two and a half hours of closed-door discussions, the party and the government announced that a consensus had been formed to first expand the recognition of exceptions for single-home owners who reside elsewhere due to unavoidable reasons.

The existing government proposal increases the capital gains tax and holding tax burdens for non-residing single-home owners while recognizing exceptions for reasons such as schooling, job changes, and medical treatment to count as residency periods for up to three years.

However, as demands poured in to increase the grounds for recognizing exceptions, such as childcare or family care, they decided to accept them.

The Democratic Party also stated that it strongly requested the government not to make distinctions based on residency for single-home comprehensive real estate holding taxes, given that the government proposal differentiated the basic deduction amount for single-home owners 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 strongly requested it, you can roughly predict how the trend of future discussions will unfold.]

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

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

(Video Shooting: Cho Choon-dong, Shin Dong-hwan | Video Editing: Park Sun-su)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.