South Korea Ruling Party Seeks to Delay 2027 Crypto Tax, While Favoring Repeal

Party raises readiness concerns at National Assembly meeting

The issue was discussed at a policy meeting at the National Assembly on improving the digital-asset tax system, held roughly three months before the tax is due to take effect. People Power Party floor leader Kweon Seong-dong attended along with party policy chief Lim I-ja and lawmakers Seo Il-jun and Song Eon-seok.

Industry figures were also present, including Dunamu CEO Oh Kyung-seok, Bithumb CEO Lee Jae-won and DigitalX CEO Oh Se-jin. Kweon said the principle of taxing income matters, but argued that authorities must first determine whether the institutions and systems required to tax digital assets fairly and accurately are actually ready.

Verification gaps and legal uncertainty drive objections

Kweon said market concerns remain unresolved. In particular, he pointed to the difficulty of accurately checking purchase prices and transaction records when trading is routed through foreign exchanges or external wallets. He also said standards have not been clearly established for reflecting profits and losses from newer forms of transactions.

Lim echoed those concerns, saying that a tax should not be introduced until taxpayers can clearly understand what is taxable and estimate what they owe. She argued that the current framework still lacks a sufficient mechanism to verify the basic data needed to calculate gains.

Lim also linked the issue to the Digital Asset Basic Act, which is under discussion in the National Assembly. In her view, work to define the legal nature of digital assets and build a basic institutional framework should move in step with tax policy, making taxation before passage of the basic law premature.

PPP says delay is immediate goal, repeal is the broader line

The party has framed delay as its near-term push, but officials also said their broader position is that virtual-asset taxation should eventually be abolished. Senior floor spokesperson Choi Su-jin told reporters after the meeting that introducing the tax under current conditions could disrupt and ultimately shrink the market.

Choi said any added tax revenue might be limited and could be offset by weaker domestic trading and an outflow of investment funds overseas. She also argued that because the Digital Asset Basic Act has not been enacted, even core terminology remains insufficiently defined, which in the party’s view exposes wider problems in the current tax framework.

According to Choi, the party plans to hold a public hearing soon and collect more views. She said repeal is the right direction in principle and that, if the tax is seen as discouraging investment, the party intends to move toward abolishing it.

Government still preparing for a 2027 launch

The government has not adopted the party’s position and is continuing preparations for implementation next year. In July, the National Tax Service created a dedicated Digital Asset Division as part of that process.

Authorities also plan to publish tax guidelines as early as October 2026. Lee Hyoung-il, nominee for deputy prime minister and minister of economy and finance, recently said in a written response to the National Assembly that starting taxation in 2027 would be desirable under the general tax principle that income should be taxed where income exists.

That leaves the next confirmed step as a political and policy clash rather than a settled outcome: the ruling party says it will pursue a delay and gather more opinions through a public hearing, while the government continues to prepare guidance and administrative systems for the tax to begin in January 2027.