South Korean MP Makes Bid to Impose Capital Gains Tax on Crypto

Tim Alper
Last updated: | 1 min read

An influential South Korean MP has put forward a private members’ bill that would see crypto taxed under the nation’s capital gains tax laws.

Yang Kyung-sook. Source: Twitter, @yangkyungsook

Per Jose Ilbo, Yang Kyung-sook, an MP for the ruling Democratic Party and a member of the National Assembly’s Planning and Finance Committee, said she has put forward a draft bill that would see the country’s tax code revised – forcing traders and crypto earners to pay tax on their crypto profits.

Yang said that other countries – such as Japan and the United States – have already implemented crypto-related capital gains tax regulations, and claims it is high time that Seoul followed suit.

Yang also sent a copy of her proposals to the nation’s top financial regulator, the Financial Services Commission.

In her supporting documentation, Yang noted that some tens of thousands of transactions were being made on the country’s four biggest crypto exchanges every year. Yang also claimed that the cumulative worth of all transactions carried out on leading crypto exchanges in the period from 2015 until May 2020 was a whopping USD 1.8 trillion.

Yang added that over the same time period, an average of 780,000 transactions per day were carried out on the platforms – with the taxman apparently unaware of any of the scale of this activity.

The MP also stated that the law should apply not only to residents of South Korea, but also to South Koreans living abroad and conducting crypto-related business or carrying out crypto trades.
__
Learn more:
Russian Traders Gear up for ‘Head Spinning’ Crypto Tax Season
66,000 Spanish Crypto Traders Warned to Pay Tax on their Earnings