Kang Min-guk, “0% reward for reporting 369 cases over 8 years… 300 million won is useless”
National Tax Service “Verifies undeclared accounts with information from financial institutions in 119 countries”
(Sejong = Yonhap News) Reporter Daehee Lee = The National Assembly pointed out that the performance of the reporting and reward system, which was introduced to promote illegal property exports overseas and suppress evasion of offshore income, is very poor.
According to the National Tax Service's 'Status of reports and rewards for violations of overseas financial account reporting obligations' obtained by People Power Party lawmaker Kang Min-guk's office (Jinju-si, Gyeongsangnam-do) on the 6th, the total number of reported cases over 11 years from 2016 to July 2026 was 470.
The obligation to report foreign financial accounts is a system that requires residents or domestic corporations to report to the National Tax Service if the total balance of foreign financial accounts held by them exceeds 500 million won on any day of the last day of each month of the previous year.
It is a system to expand the tax base by suppressing illegal property exports and evasion of offshore income, and attracting property that has already been exported overseas to taxation.
From 2011 to the end of last year, 969 people were caught for failing to report their accounts and a fine of 287.8 billion won was imposed. Last year, there were 148 people and 24.5 billion won.
The National Tax Service encouraged public participation in detecting non-reporters and introduced a reporting and reward system to increase the efficiency of detection, but Rep. Kang is aware of the problem that the number of reports was only about 40 cases per year on average.
Looking at reports by year, it peaked at 9 cases in 2016, 54 cases in 2018, 64 cases in 2020, and 75 cases in 2021. Afterwards, there is a downward trend to 37 cases in 2022, 57 cases in 2024, 27 cases in 2025, and 20 cases by July of this year.
Rep. Kang pointed out that because reporting was not active, the number of actual rewards paid was minimal.
From 2016 to July of this year, only 3 rewards were paid, accounting for only 0.6% of the total number of reports.
There is only one case each in 2018, 2025, and this year. Of the 369 cases reported over the remaining eight years, not a single payment was made.
The total reward money paid for the three cases was 67 million won. During the same period, it was 18.4% of the budgeted 364 million won, and 297 million won was treated as ‘unused’.
The National Tax Service explained that there is a realistic reason that it is difficult to receive many reports due to the nature of overseas account information.
An official from the National Tax Service explained, “It is not easy to operate the system because the informant must provide all information, including account number, owner, balance, and information on the person operating in the country, and then pay a fine to receive the reward.”
Rep. Kang said that another problem is that the National Tax Service does not separately manage account balances, violation account financial companies, and detailed status of violation of reporting obligations that were reported through reports.
Rep. Kang pointed out, "Violation of reporting obligations on overseas financial account balances can lead to problems of illegal outflow of domestic capital and evasion of offshore income, so even though reporting on this is an important axis, it is extremely low and even the reported information is poorly managed, which is a dereliction of duty by the National Tax Service."
He added, “It is necessary for the National Tax Service to carefully analyze the reported violation of overseas financial account reporting obligations and prepare a practical promotional plan through promotional agreements with banks and other financial companies.”
Regarding this, an official from the National Tax Service explained, "Due to the nature of overseas financial accounts that are difficult to verify domestically, we are verifying undeclared accounts based on financial information exchanged between financial institutions in 119 countries rather than individual reports. We are trying to activate the system by promoting it so that reports can be made from overseas."
He also added, "If the details are disclosed, future reporting may be discouraged due to concerns that the informant's identity will be exposed, making it difficult to disclose balances, overseas financial company information, etc."
