The National Tax Service has taken direct aim at ticket scalpers who raked in huge profits by selling idol group concert tickets, originally priced at 200,000 won, at a markup.
The National Tax Service said on the 6th that it detected income evasion by scalpers who exploited fans' devotion to artists and professional sports teams and began tax audits of them.
According to the National Tax Service, only about 400 people, the top 1% of sellers on ticket transaction platforms, monopolized nearly half of all transactions. Their average annual transaction amount per person reached as much as 67 million won.
The National Tax Service selected 17 people (14 individuals and three corporations) among scalpers who are strongly suspected of income evasion and launched tax audits. These 17 operators are estimated to have distributed at least more than 20 billion won worth of scalped tickets through tens of thousands of transactions. It was even found that the audit targets include a private school teacher and an employee of a public institution. Asked whether the wrongdoing had been conveyed to the scalpers' affiliated institutions, a National Tax Service official said, "We cannot disclose it externally under the Framework Act on National Taxes."
Scalpers' ticketing and resale methods fall into four main types: 1) ticket resale using online platforms and secondhand transaction communities; 2) proxy ticketing in which scalpers reserve tickets on behalf of would-be buyers (so-called "daelti"); 3) selling "macro programs" that enable illegal reservations; and 4) selling internet addresses (direct reservation links) that allow immediate booking without waiting in a queue.
The secondhand transaction method is the most typical. Those surveyed secured more than 40,000 major admission tickets over several years and took excessive profits amounting to as much as 30 times the face value. Some tried to avoid exposing their sales history on secondhand boards by receiving payments into personal accounts and then deleting the ticket sale posts without marking them as "sold," thereby concealing revenue.
Proxy ticketing is a method in which the "pro players" of the scalping industry band together to secure tickets in an organized way and take fee revenue. They are known to have dispersed income amounts using bank accounts under borrowed names and reduced their taxes.
Recently, more scalpers have been using macro programs. A National Tax Service official said, "The recent ticketing war has gone beyond second-by-second competition to a point where it is 'no longer winnable by human ability,'" and added, "In reality, people cannot even dare to try booking without a macro." In the past, many scalpers bulk-bought tickets with macro programs and resold them, but as crackdowns on macro programs intensified, the practice evolved into selling the programs themselves.
A method of "online cutting in line" by bypassing the queue is also prevalent. Currently, ticketing allows entry in the order of clicks on each site, and you can buy a ticket when your turn comes up. Ticketing queues can exceed thousands to tens of thousands of people. As a result, specialist firms created URL links that allow online cutting in line and sold those links to pocket unjust gains, it was found.
Ahn Deok-su, head of investigations at the National Tax Service, said, "This tax audit will focus on thoroughly verifying scalpers' revenue details, fund flows, and whether there are hidden assets," and added, "We will actively use all available tools, including financial tracing and Financial Intelligence Unit information, to check every cash transaction related to ticket scalping."