The total amount of unpaid national taxes exceeded 2 billion won this year, leading to an increase of 1,700 in the number of individuals publicly listed compared to last year. The unpaid tax amount also increased by more than 1 trillion won.
The National Tax Service on the 17th disclosed personal information on its website of large-scale and habitual tax delinquents who owe more than 2 billion won in unpaid national taxes. The individuals listed this time are those whose delinquent taxes of 2 billion won or more have been outstanding for over one year as of Dec. 31 last year.
The disclosed items include the name or business name (corporate name), age, occupation, address, type of tax unpaid, due date, and reason for delinquency. If the delinquent is a corporation, the representative of the corporation is also revealed.
This year, the new individuals disclosed are 6,033 individuals and 3,633 corporations. The total amount of unpaid taxes is 6.1896 trillion won, with individuals accounting for 4.0601 trillion won and corporations 2.1295 trillion won each.
The total number of new individuals disclosed this year is 9,666, an increase of 1,700 compared to last year (7,966). The scale of disclosed unpaid taxes also increased by 1.0583 trillion won.
Among this year's newly disclosed individuals, the highest amount of unpaid tax is owed by Lee Hyun-seok (39), who has incurred 213.6 billion won from operating an illegal online gambling site. The corporation with the highest unpaid taxes is a real estate rental company, Giant Strong Co., which owes 44.4 billion won in corporate taxes. The representative of Giant Strong was Yoichi Watanabe.
A National Tax Service official explained, "For individuals who habitually owe large amounts of tax, compulsory collection measures like seizure and public sale, as well as administrative sanctions like travel bans and providing delinquency information, are imposed," noting that "for delinquents with high suspicions of asset concealment, investigations of their actual residence, lawsuits for the cancellation of fraudulent actions, and prosecutions for evading tax seizure are underway."
The official added, "Whistleblowers who report hidden assets contributing to the collection of unpaid taxes can receive rewards of up to 3 billion won," urging, "If you are aware of a delinquent's hidden assets, please actively report it."