National Tax Service's real estate tax-evasion reporting center received 633 of 780 tips from Greater Seoul in five months
About eight in 10 tips submitted to the National Tax Service's real estate tax-evasion reporting center — which offers rewards of up to 4 billion won ($2.66 million) — have come from the Greater Seoul area, including Seoul, Gyeonggi Province and Incheon, according to new data.
Under the program, tipsters who provide key evidence leading to the collection of at least 50 million won ($33,300) in back taxes are eligible for rewards of up to 4 billion won, scaled to the amount recovered.
Data submitted to the office of Rep. Cha Gyu-geun of the Rebuilding Korea Party, a member of the National Assembly's Finance and Economy Planning Committee, showed that 633 of the 780 tips — or 81 percent — received between the center's launch in November last year and the end of March were handled by regional offices covering Greater Seoul: the Seoul, Jungbu and Incheon offices.
Within Greater Seoul, the Seoul office logged the most tips at 322, followed by the Jungbu office with 164 and the Incheon office with 147. The four non-metropolitan offices — Daejeon (47), Gwangju (44), Busan (47) and Daegu (9) — together accounted for just 147 tips.
Tips surged in January, with the Greater Seoul concentration particularly pronounced that month. January alone accounted for 291 tips, or 37 percent of the total, followed by November last year (136), December last year (129), March this year (126) and February this year (98).
Greater Seoul's share of January tips reached 93 percent, or 270 cases — with the Seoul office receiving 125, the Incheon office 102 and the Jungbu office 43.
Outside Greater Seoul, the Busan office received 11 tips in January, Gwangju 6, Daejeon 4 and Daegu none.
The reporting center was established to stamp out tax evasion in real estate transactions, including illicit gift transfers and fraudulent contracts. Officials say the center relies on public tips because evasion schemes have grown increasingly covert and sophisticated, and because the spread of misleading tax-avoidance information online has made enforcement through official channels alone insufficient.
Rep. Cha urged the NTS to act swiftly on the tips it has received. "The fact that more than 80 percent of all reports are concentrated in Greater Seoul, and that filings surged in such a short period, reflects how strongly the public wants to hold real estate tax evaders in the metropolitan area accountable," he said. "The NTS must not simply log these reports — it must verify them rigorously and follow through with actual collection as soon as possible."
oskymoon@heraldcorp.com
