Seoul is conducting a study to assess how the property tax burden on Seoul dwellings owners compares with that of major global cities. Officials say nationwide comparisons make it hard to gauge the real burden in large, high-price cities like Seoul. With the government possibly unveiling a property tax overhaul as early as late July, attention is on whether Seoul's findings will serve as a basis for future tax debates.
According to Seoul City and academia on the 30th, the city commissioned Lee Gwan-ok, a professor at the National University of Singapore Business School's real estate department, to conduct a study titled "Comparison of property taxes in major global cities." A Seoul official said, "Most property tax comparison data are compiled at the national level, making it difficult to simply compare tax burdens by city," and added, "We requested the study to identify the level of the property tax burden on Seoul dwellings owners under identical conditions." The city placed the contract early this year, and the research is reportedly in the final stage. The method of publicly releasing the results is under internal review.
The study compares the annual property tax due in each city when owning a dwelling of the same price. For example, for someone owning a dwelling priced in the 1.2 billion won range, equivalent to the median price of a Seoul apartment, the team examines the burden in Seoul, New York, Tokyo, London, and Singapore. The researchers segment dwelling prices at the top 50%, 75%, and 90% levels, and are simulating case-by-case tax burdens by reflecting factors such as owning one, two, or three dwellings and whether the unit is owner-occupied.
A city-by-city comparison is needed because national-level statistics alone do not capture the tax burden people actually feel. The most commonly used metric is the effective tax rate, the ratio of property tax to market value. But many argue simple comparisons have limits because each country assesses market values and calculates tax bases differently. Conclusions also vary by study. According to a September 2025 report by the private think tank Land+Liberty Research Institute, Korea's effective property tax rate in 2023 was 0.15%, lower than the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) average of 0.33%. In contrast, measured as a share of gross domestic product (GDP), Korea was roughly on par with the OECD average.
With home prices surging in the Seoul metropolitan area, the comprehensive real estate tax, levied on publicly assessed values of 900 million won or more (1.2 billion won for single-home households), is concentrating in certain provinces and cities. According to the Ministry of Data and Statistics (MODS), the determined comprehensive real estate tax on dwellings for the 2024 tax year totaled 1.0876 trillion won. Of that, Seoul accounted for 569.8 billion won, or 52.4% of the total. Gyeonggi followed with 221.9 billion won, or 20.4%, and Busan with 55.2 billion won, or 5.1%. Ulsan (0.9%·9.9 billion won) and Sejong (0.4%·4.0 billion won) were below 1%.
Experts say the property tax debate should not stop at a simple country-by-country comparison of "high" or "low." That is because even within one country, the price gap between Seoul and regional areas is large, and the tax structures differ for single-home owner-occupiers and multiple-home owners. Observers say that once Seoul's study is released, it could become the first dataset to compare the actual tax burden on dwellings owners in major metropolitan areas.