Last year’s tax deadbeats outed by government

Economy

Published: 28 Nov. 2013, 20:31

Last year’s tax deadbeats outed by government

The National Tax Service posted the names of 2,598 people and companies that have owed the government handsome amounts of taxes for more than a year. Taken all together, these people and companies owe the government nearly 4.8 trillion won ($4.5 billion).

The list includes Cho Dong-man, former vice chairman of Hansol Group and grandchild of Samsung founder Lee Byung-chull.

In fact, Cho topped the list for individuals. According to the agency, he owes the government a total of 71.5 billion won in capital gains taxes.

The list includes people who owe more than 500 million won and have been late on payments for more than a year.

Other personal information including jobs and addresses were included.

To heighten public awareness about the deadbeats, the tax agency said this year the information is available on its website at www.nts.go.kr, but has also been made available on Korea’s two largest Internet portal websites, Naver and Daum.

The tax agency has been publicly listing the names of people overdue on huge tax debts since 2004.

The conditions for making the list changed last year. Previously, the names of people who owed the government 700 million won or more and haven’t paid their debts for more than two years were made public. As a result, the number of new names on the list shot up from 1,313 in 2011 to 7,213 in 2012. This year 2,598 people were newly added.

Most of the people owed the government between 1.1 billion won and 3 billion won, accounting for over 47.2 percent of the people on the list. The next most common amount that people owed was between 500 million won and 1 billion won, which accounted for 42.7 percent.

“Those who paid more than 30 percent of the debt or are currently under review after filing a dispute of the tax agency’s claims were not included on the list,” said an NTS official.

BY LEE HO-JEONG [ojlee82@joongang.co.kr]