Corporations with December Fiscal Year-End Must File and Pay Corporate Tax by End of March This Year

Export SMEs Granted 3-Month Automatic Extension on Payment Deadlines
Enhanced Verification for Noncompliant Reporting Corporations and Accounting Fraud in Public Interest Corporations

The National Tax Service (NTS) announced on the 27th that corporations with a December fiscal year-end in 2022 must file and pay corporate tax by March 31st next month, and can conveniently file electronically via Hometax starting March 1st. Approximately 1,065,000 corporations with a December fiscal year-end are required to file this time, an increase of about 66,000 compared to last year (approximately 999,000).

Corporations subject to the faithful reporting confirmation or consolidated tax payment corporations may file and pay corporate tax by May 2nd. Those subject to faithful reporting confirmation include ▲small corporations primarily engaged in real estate rental businesses, ▲businesses converted from individual faithful reporting confirmation taxpayers to corporations, and ▲other corporations that have acquired businesses managed by corporate conversion businesses through in-kind contributions, among others. However, corporations subject to faithful reporting confirmation must submit a 'Faithful Reporting Confirmation Letter' from their tax agent along with their corporate tax return.

If the tax amount to be paid exceeds 10 million KRW, partial payment of the tax can be made within one month (by May 2nd) from the day after the payment deadline, and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) can pay in installments within two months (by May 31st).

The NTS is providing support such as extending the payment deadline for export SMEs, which are the backbone of our economy. The NTS has independently selected 20,000 SMEs whose export sales accounted for 50% or more of total sales in 2021 or 2022, and added 4,000 export-related SMEs selected by the Korea Customs Service and Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency (KOTRA), extending the payment deadline by three months ex officio for a total of 24,000 SMEs.

Additionally, the NTS plans to provide maximum tax support to export SMEs through the 'Future Growth Tax Support Centers' established at the headquarters, regional offices, and tax offices, including early refund payments, priority review of research and development (R&D) tax credits, and exemption from verification of filing details. The NTS also stated that even if a corporation is not subject to ex officio extension, it will actively consider requests for payment deadline extensions from corporations that have suffered significant business losses.

The NTS conducts annual verification of control over affiliated companies through public interest corporations and the use of contributed assets for purposes other than public interest. Going forward, it will strictly manage and block illegal activities by conducting tax audits on tax law violations such as accounting fraud and private use.

Furthermore, the NTS plans to conduct verification such as checking filing details by precisely analyzing whether future filing assistance data is reflected. However, export SMEs and others will, in principle, be excluded from filing detail verification to support taxpayers in focusing solely on their business management.

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