South Korea Assembly Panel Reviews Seven Bills to Delay or Scrap Crypto Tax

South Korea's National Assembly will review seven amendments on November 11 that would delay or abolish the taxation of virtual assets, marking the most concentrated legislative push on the issue to date.

The Tax Subcommittee of the National Assembly's Strategy and Finance Committee is scheduled to take up the proposals at a 2 p.m. session, according to industry sources. The agenda covers two core questions: how long any deferral should run, and whether investors can carry losses forward against future tax liabilities.

What does each bill propose?

The seven amendments span both major parties and range from a full repeal to phased delays:

• Park Min-kyu (Democratic Party): two-year delay.
• Ahn Do-geol (Democratic Party): two-year delay plus a three-year loss carryforward provision.
• Song Eon-seok (People Power Party): full abolition of virtual-asset taxation.
• Jeong Seong-guk and Kim Jae-seop (People Power Party): three-year delay.
• Kim Sang-hoon (People Power Party): two-year delay.
• Choi Eun-seok (People Power Party): two-year delay, five-year loss carryforward and a higher basic deduction limit.

The spread of proposals means the subcommittee's discussion will extend beyond timing into the mechanics of how investment losses factor into tax calculations — a design question with direct consequences for exchanges, accounting firms and retail investors preparing compliance workflows.

Where the government stands

The government has already aligned with the deferral camp. On November 5, it decided to pursue a plan that would postpone implementation by two years and permit loss carryforwards for three years. The decision followed a request from the ruling party to push back the tax's start date.

That position narrows the legislative field. Ruling party lawmakers, opposition legislators and the government now share the view that virtual-asset taxation should be deferred rather than introduced on the current schedule. The remaining disagreement is procedural: the length of the delay and the carryforward window, where proposals range from two to three years on timing and three to five years on loss treatment.

What does this change for practitioners?

For exchanges and reporting infrastructure providers in South Korea, the outcome determines when transaction-level record-keeping obligations attach to customer accounts. A two-year delay moves that workload to a later budget cycle; a three-year delay pushes it further out. The carryforward period matters just as much: a five-year window, as proposed by Choi Eun-seok, would require investors and tax software vendors to maintain loss records across a longer horizon than the government's three-year baseline, effectively extending data-retention requirements by two additional filing seasons.

The basic deduction limit in Choi's amendment also signals a second axis of negotiation. If lawmakers raise the threshold above the existing level, smaller retail positions could fall outside taxable reporting altogether, shrinking the compliance perimeter before the tax ever takes effect.

The legislative clock

Song Eon-seok's abolition bill remains the outlier. With both parties and the government committed to deferral rather than repeal, the realistic contest is between a two-year and three-year postponement, and between a three-year and five-year carryforward.

The subcommittee's November 11 session will determine which amendments advance to the full Strategy and Finance Committee, setting the timeline for when — not whether — South Korea's virtual-asset tax regime takes effect.