NTS chief vows tighter fiscal revenue management, crackdown on malicious tax evasion

National Tax Service Commissioner Lim Gwang-hyeon said the agency will go beyond tax collection in its second year under the People's Sovereignty Government, pledging to manage all national fiscal revenue without gaps and to establish firm tax justice by stamping out antisocial tax evasion and delinquency.

Lim made the announcement Thursday at a press briefing at the Government Sejong 2 Complex to mark the first anniversary of the People's Sovereignty Government, laying out the NTS's priorities for the year ahead.

"We will evolve from a 'National Tax Service' into an integrated 'Korea Revenue Service' that drives fiscal innovation," Lim said. "We will bring together the scattered streams of national fiscal revenue and manage them without a single gap."

As part of that effort, the NTS plans to overhaul the fragmented collection system for non-tax revenue — currently governed by more than 300 separate laws — and move forward with integrated collection of non-tax delinquencies. Starting next month, a dedicated "Non-Tax Revenue Delinquency Management Team" will assess the status of delinquent payers and quickly build a tailored collection framework for each case.

The agency will also prepare the legal, technological and organizational foundations for integrated collection, including a unified "Non-Tax Revenue Integrated Collection Act" and the necessary IT infrastructure, staffing and organizational structure.

Lim said the NTS would also accelerate its AI transformation. "We will push even harder on the full-scale AI overhaul of tax administration and deliver a 'K-AI' tax service that the world will envy," he said.

He said the agency would prioritize services that citizens can feel directly this year, including a generative AI chatbot, AI-powered phone consultations and AI features on the Hometax platform — so that taxpayers "no longer need to visit a tax office or even know where one is."

With full budget funding coming next year, Lim said the agency would launch the main project and complete development of its AI tools, with the goal of having AI automatically prepare tax returns and provide personalized tax consulting from 2028.

"We will also complete an automated tax-evasion detection system that flags suspected evasion on its own," he added, "so that the NTS becomes the strictest authority there is against malicious tax evaders."

Lim identified his third goal as establishing firm tax justice in which antisocial tax evasion and delinquency have no place.

"We will concentrate our investigative resources on areas where irregularities and unfairness persist — price-fixing and other evasion that harms ordinary people's livelihoods, unfair practices in the stock market that undermine capital market order, and real estate tax evasion that threatens housing stability for working families," he said. "We will make it unmistakably clear across society that antisocial tax evasion has nowhere to hide."

Lim also pledged to continue rooting out evasion that draws public outrage — such as the personal use of luxury homes and supercars — while taking a firm line against malicious delinquents through the delinquency management team and extending a helping hand to small-scale delinquents struggling to make ends meet.

Looking back on the past year, Lim called it "a year of removing unfair privilege and abnormality and restoring tax justice."

The NTS investigated 27 cases of stock market tax evasion — including "tunneling" schemes that siphon off assets and profits, and share price manipulation — recouping 257.6 billion won ($186 million) and referring 38 cases for criminal action (30 complaints filed, eight payment orders issued). A second round of investigations has recently begun.

On price-fixing and monopolistic practices that have driven up living costs for ordinary citizens, the agency conducted 117 investigations across four rounds, recouping 308.4 billion won ($223 million) to date and taking criminal action in 21 cases (four complaints filed, 17 payment orders issued).

The NTS also tackled real estate tax evasion, verifying 256 cases and recouping a total of 48.1 billion won ($35 million), with plans to mobilize every available tool going forward.

Since launching the delinquency management team and deploying special mobile units targeting high-value delinquents, the agency collected 3.1 trillion won ($2.24 billion) in overdue taxes — the largest amount in the NTS's history.

For delinquents who had moved assets overseas, the NTS expanded its collection cooperation network from Asia to Europe, recovering 33.9 billion won ($24.5 million) within a year.

Lim also highlighted other taxpayer-friendly measures taken over the past year, including allowing businesses to choose the timing of regular tax audits, extending payment deadlines and accelerating refunds for companies affected by the war in the Middle East, and adopting a citizen-centered approach to interpreting tax law.

"The year ahead will be a time of great leap forward, in which we repay the public's trust with results that exceed their expectations," Lim said.