Why does South Korea want to delay its crypto tax until 2029?

South Korea's crypto tax law dates to 2020, when lawmakers approved a 22% levy on gains above 2.5 million won. It has already been postponed three times, most recently pushed to January 2027. The new push to 2029 would be a fourth delay, and officials are tying the date to the OECD's CARF framework, which the United States is expected to join that year, finally allowing Seoul to receive data on Korean traders' activity on US exchanges.

Traders on domestic platforms like Upbit and Bithumb face continued uncertainty about when, or whether, they must start tracking cost basis for gains. Without a delay, they would be taxed from January 2027 while users routing trades through offshore exchanges remain largely invisible to Korean tax authorities until Washington starts sharing data. A further postponement spares domestic exchange users an uneven tax burden, but leaves them in limbo, still needing records ready in case the Assembly reverses course.

The repeated delays expose a basic fairness problem: a government cannot credibly enforce a capital gains tax on crypto when it can see transactions on licensed local exchanges but not those routed offshore. Taxing only the compliant creates an incentive to move activity abroad, undermining the policy's own goal. Officials citing data gaps with the US are effectively admitting that domestic enforcement alone cannot work, a tension that will persist even after 2029 unless offshore reporting closes further.

The National Assembly has not yet voted on moving the start date to January 2029, despite the presidential office signalling support. That legislative step, not another official briefing, will determine whether the fourth postponement becomes law or whether the January 2027 deadline still stands. A failure to pass the change in time would leave traders and exchanges facing the original 2027 start with little runway to prepare.