281 Real Estate Dealers and Gangnam Cram Schools to be Inspected by the NTS

If a person, after selling his or her apartment, does not report the accurate amount of transfer income tax to government, the National Tax Service (NTS) will go through an intensive investigation on the person. In addition, 50 cram schools, which have not filed enough in income tax returns so far, will be thoroughly examined by the end of this month.

Lee Yong-seop, chief of the NTS, has passed on his intentions at the conference held on November 11, and said, “The standard price (the price which is set based on government information) of 930,000 households out of the 5.16 million total households (about 20 percent) in the country will be marked up to meet with the actual price seen in the market.”

The target of settlement is the same as follows. Since April 30, 2003, in Seoul and its metropolitan area or in large cities nationwide, 1,160 apartment complexes (7.3 million households) have been marked up by 10 percent of its original price (over $42,000), and 380 apartment complexes (200,000 households) have been marked up by 20 percent of its original price, although the change in price doesn’t exceed $40,000.

Lee added that by this month, the “Early Tax Inspection” initiative will be followed through, in order to start the tax inspection on people who have handed over or bought real estate properties such as apartments earlier.

According to this decision, the period from the actual apartment deal to tax inspection, which usually takes two years, will be reduced to three months, making it much easier to identify if there is tax corruption.

Among the real estate dealers who have cleaned up during the recent prosperous real estate market, NTS will also inspect 231 dealers in the area, who have not declared enough income tax so far, for possible speculation.

In addition, another tax inspection on about 600 people, who had dealt with the right of house installment sales from February 2002 to June 2003, will commence this month.

Also, collecting the information of housing deals since July, NTS plans to look into the people suspected of tax corruption just after the declaration of the transfer income tax period, which is supposed to end soon.

“There are many cram schools in the Gangnam area of Seoul, known as the “Special Market,” which are in very prosperous conditions compared to other industries. We will gun for some of the major cram schools which are under the suspicion of reducing its actual amount of income,” remarked Lee, adding, “We are planning to increase the target of tax inspection to the other prosperous industries.”

Ji-Wan Cha cha@donga.com