South Korean Tax Dodgers Out of Pocket as Authorities Seize $768,500 Worth of Crypto
South Korean “tax dodgers” have been dealt another blow, with tax authorities in the city of Hwaseong confiscating cryptoassets worth over $768,500.
Tax officers said they had seized a whopping $567,000 of the total from one single individual. The move is part of a continued nationwide crackdown.
Crypto trading profits are not yet subject to taxation in South Korea, where successive governments have u-turned on and delayed plans to introduce levies.
However, tax officials think that many people throughout the country have used crypto to conceal their earnings and income.
Tax officers have been given the power to comb data from domestic crypto exchanges to look for evidence of undeclared income.
Per Newsis, the city began to investigate the aforementioned individual after noticing they had failed to pay local taxes and local income tax levies.
But using a new “electronic management system that can track virtual assets,” Hwaseong tax officials could monitor the individual’s crypto transactions.
The city began using the new platform in October last year. Officials used this solution to probe the individual, named only as “A” by the media outlet.
City officials initially found that A appeared to own no property, had no cash assets, and did not live at a registered Hwaseong address.
The officials launched a larger probe in conjunction with the National Tax Service. They even questioned A’s family members.
Eventually, the officials began to suspect that A may have been using crypto to pay for living costs.
Using crypto exchange data, the officials unearthed A’s crypto holdings, which they seized to pay off the individual’s tax bills.
The city also began investigating 568 residents who had defaulted on large amounts of local taxes.
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