[Sejong=Asia Economy Reporter Kim Hyun-jung] The number of single-homeowners paying comprehensive real estate tax has increased fourfold in four years, and the proportion of single-homeowners among taxpayers has also risen.
According to data titled '2016~2020 Housing Comprehensive Real Estate Tax Decisions and Notices' submitted by the National Tax Service to Kim Sang-hoon, a member of the National Assembly Land, Infrastructure and Transport Committee from the People Power Party, as of the end of November last year, the number of 'single-homeowners' who were notified of the comprehensive real estate tax was 291,000, which is 4.2 times the 69,000 people decided in 2016.
Although the number of notices does not exactly match the number of decisions, it is possible to estimate that the number of single-homeowners subject to the comprehensive real estate tax has increased about fourfold. The number of single-homeowners paying the comprehensive real estate tax, which was about 69,000 in 2016, increased annually by 20,000 to 70,000 after the Moon Jae-in administration took office in 2017, and by about 100,000 in 2020 alone.
Accordingly, the proportion of single-homeowners among those subject to the housing comprehensive real estate tax rose from 25.1% in 2016 (based on decisions) to 32.5% in 2018 (based on decisions), and then jumped again to 43.6% last year (based on notices). Representative Kim predicted that if this trend continues, single-homeowners could outnumber multi-homeowners among comprehensive real estate tax payers.
The comprehensive real estate tax amount for single-homeowners also increased significantly. The tax amount was 33.9 billion KRW in 2016, rose to 71.8 billion KRW in 2018, 146 billion KRW in 2019, and the estimated notice amount last year was 318.8 billion KRW, which is 9.4 times that of 2016.
Representative Kim Sang-hoon said, "The comprehensive real estate tax, which was intended to curb speculative demand from multi-homeowners, has been distorted into a punitive tax on single-homeowners due to the Moon Jae-in administration's real estate policies," and urged, "Measures are needed to identify actual users and ease their tax burden."
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