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Our coverage confirmed that Starbucks Korea, which made more than 1.8 trillion won in sales last year in Korea, is undergoing a tax investigation by the National Tax Service. Rather than conducting regular investigations every few years, the National Tax Service is analyzing Starbucks Korea's accounting books as a tax investigation to look into suspicion of tax evasion.

Reporter Kim Hye-min was covered alone.

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It is from the middle of last month that the IRS started a tax investigation into Starbucks Korea.

It is known that the investigators belonging to the Seoul Regional Tax Service International Trade Bureau have visited the headquarters of Starbucks Korea several times to obtain accounting books and computerized data.

The International Trade Research Bureau, which conducted the investigation as a non-regular tax investigation rather than a regular tax investigation, is investigating the suspicion of offshore tax evasion by multinational companies including Google.

Starbucks Korea is also known to focus on whether or not multinational corporations manipulate transfer prices, the most common type of tax evasion.

The transfer price is the price applied when supplying raw materials and products between overseas subsidiaries, and you can avoid tax by raising or lowering this price.


In particular, Starbucks Korea operates 100% directly and imports not only coffee beans but also raw materials for interior decoration in the United States.

The National Tax Service intends to check whether any parts of Starbucks Korea have been accounted for in accordance with domestic tax laws.

The IRS announced earlier this year that it would strengthen verification of multinational companies' avoidance of aggressive taxation.

Starbucks Korea was founded in 1997 by the US headquarters and Shinsegae Group's E-Mart, which invested half of its shares. The.

(Video editing: Jongtae Kim, VJ: Seungmin Han)