'Parents' chance' to buy billions of apartments... 97 tax audits

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In the second quarter of the last two quarters of housing sales in Seoul, the proportion of people in their 20s or younger was 7%. The National Tax Service has started a tax investigation by identifying about 100 people in their teens and 20s who seem to have bought a house through expedient gifting as a so-called 'parent's chance'.

This is the report by reporter Seong-hyeon Cho.

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National Tax Service has launched a tax investigation on 97 people with ambiguous sources of funds among those who purchased expensive apartments, villas, or old apartments with high expectations for reconstruction.

Fifty-one teenagers and those in their 20s with little or no income are accused of expediently donating the acquisition funds from their parents, etc. without filing a gift tax return while buying expensive apartments or villas.

In order to evade the regulation of multi-family dwellings, we also caught cases suspected of being acquired by parents in the name of their children.

Although the total number of apartment transactions has decreased this year, the proportion of those in their 20s or younger is increasing.

In fact, among the subjects of this investigation, there is a case in which young people in their late teens with no income at all started a restaurant, paid hundreds of millions of won in deposits and start-up funds, and then prepared an additional expensive house worth billions of won the following year. It is understood that he received funds from his father.

Among the people who bought old apartments that were about to be reconstructed, 46 people whose source of funds were unknown were also investigated.

They are accused of acquiring expensive reconstructed apartments by illegally outflowing corporate funds or income stolen from businesses with little reported income.

The National Tax Service emphasized that it will greatly strengthen the verification of the source of funds when the acquirer is in their 20s or younger, not only for houses where wealth can be passed down, but also for commercial buildings and stocks.