Choo Kyung-ho: "Reduce Comprehensive Real Estate Tax Rate to Maximum 2.7% for Public Interest Corporations like LH"

Owners of One House or One Pre-sale Right, No Capital Gains Tax if Existing House Sold Within 3 Years of Completion
Special Disposal Period Extended from 2 to 3 Years

[Asia Economy Sejong=Reporter Kim Hyewon] On the 26th, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Economy and Finance Choo Kyung-ho announced, "In cases where public housing operators and other public interest corporations hold three or more houses for rental purposes, we will ease the tax burden by applying the basic progressive tax rate (0.5~2.7%) instead of the heavy progressive tax rate (0.5~5.0%)."

Deputy Prime Minister Choo presided over an emergency economic ministers' meeting at the Government Seoul Office on the same day and said, "We will push for amendments to the Comprehensive Real Estate Tax Act in the February extraordinary session of the National Assembly."

He explained, "Recently, with the increased burden of monthly rent and deposit, the active role of public housing operators such as LH and SH for the housing stability of ordinary citizens has become important. However, due to the partial retention of the heavy comprehensive real estate tax system for multi-homeowners, contrary to the government proposal in last year's regular session, excessive comprehensive real estate tax burdens have occurred, raising concerns that these costs may be passed on to tenants."

He also stated, "For genuine buyers who temporarily hold one additional housing right or pre-sale right besides their primary residence, we will extend the disposal period of the previous house, which is exempt from capital gains tax, from within 2 years to within 3 years to alleviate difficulties in disposing of the previous house due to recent sluggish transactions." This measure will also be retroactively applied from transfers made after the 12th of last month, aligning the disposal period extension for temporary two-homeowners and the application timing, and the Ministry plans to amend the Enforcement Decree of the Income Tax Act in February accordingly.

[Image source=Yonhap News]

Regarding support measures for small and medium-sized enterprises' exports, he said, "We will designate 1,000 global strong small and medium enterprises and provide concentrated support of up to 10.9 billion KRW per company through export vouchers, research and development (R&D), and policy finance. Incentives will also be significantly expanded for indirect export companies supplying raw and subsidiary materials to export companies and companies diversifying export countries." A service export quota will be introduced within the export voucher system, and certification procedures for service exports such as content and software will be simplified.

Regarding the -0.4% contraction in the fourth quarter of last year's Gross Domestic Product (GDP), Deputy Prime Minister Choo forecasted, "For the first quarter of this year, it is expected that positive growth will be possible thanks to the base effect and China's economic reopening."

He added, "The first half of this year will be a very difficult period for our economy due to the global economic downturn, but as we move into the second half, we expect our economy to gradually show a recovery trend due to improvements in the global economy and the semiconductor industry."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.