Government and Ruling Party Agree to Ease Tax Revision for Single-Home Owners

The government and the ruling Democratic Party (DP) shared a consensus Sunday on the need to relax a proposed tax revision that could hurt single-home owners not living in the property, a party spokesperson said.

The consensus was reached during a high-level policy coordination meeting held for the first time since last Monday's election of former Prime Minister Kim Min-seok as DP leader.

"A consensus was formed between the party and the government on various opinions, such as expanding residency recognition for people who do not live in their property for inevitable reasons," DP senior spokesperson Park Sung-joon said at a press briefing at the National Assembly after the meeting.

Park said the two sides also agreed to push for a revision to the law to authorize local government chiefs to issue construction permits for residential complexes of up to 500 units.

During the meeting at the official residence of Prime Minister Han Seong-sook, the DP leader had addressed the controversy surrounding the government's push to increase housing supply in the greater Seoul area and the accompanying tax code revisions, saying more deliberation was needed regarding the proposal to effectively increase taxes on single-home owners who do not live in the property.

Under the proposal, the government will lower their basic deduction for the comprehensive real estate holding tax from the current 1.2 billion won (US$865,500) to 900 million won.

"We need to broadly recognize the various inevitable reasons for not living in the property and remove blind spots," Kim said.

Presidential chief of staff Kang Hoon-sik stressed the importance of sending clear "signals," such as when, where and how many units will be built, in order to ease the public's anxieties around housing supply.

He asked that the party's local leaders use their knowledge of their communities to present ways to secure land for housing construction in the immediate term, promising that the government and Cheong Wa Dae would actively review them.