Korea: Right to claim refund of wrongly withheld tax (Supreme Court decision); VAT monthly reporting; obligation to file CbC report; other tax developments
Recent tax developments in Korea
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May 13, 2025
The Supreme Court on April 24, 2025, held that the taxpayer did not have the right to claim a refund of wrongly withheld tax because the right to claim the refund remained with the withholding tax agent until the taxpayer acquires such right from the withholding agent.
In addition, the Supreme Court on March 27, 2025, applied substance-over-form principles to recharacterize a real estate agency business as a land sales business which resulted in the taxpayer under reporting corporate income tax and being subject to penalty for issuing false tax invoices.
Read a May 2025 report prepared by the KPMG member firm in Korea
Other recent tax developments in Korea include:
- Value added tax (VAT) monthly transaction reporting obligation expanded to foreign online platform service providers and payment gateway service providers
- Guidance regarding whether the 95% foreign source dividend exclusion rule can apply to dividends from a foreign subsidiary subject to CFC rules when there are no undistributed earnings deemed to be paid by application of the CFC rules because all distributable earnings were distributed at end of year
- Clarification on what constitutes a certificate of residency
- Determining withholding tax obligation of buyer that acquires Korean company shares from a foreign partnership
- Determining the income classification of Korean source income derived by a Japanese entity from participating in a profit-sharing scheme in return for bearing game development costs of its Korean parent company
- Clarification on the obligation to submit country-by-country (CbC) report
- Tax Tribunal’s clarification that certain benefit recognized by a foreign corporation upon acquiring shares of a domestic corporation at a price below the arm’s length value from an overseas related party should not be regarded as “donation of assets located in Korea” and thus taxed as Korean source other income to the foreign corporation