South Korea to Publish Crypto Tax Guidelines This Year, Rejecting ‘Black Box’ Concerns

South Korea’s government pushed back against industry concerns that tax rules for virtual assets set to take effect next year remain unclear, saying the National Tax Service will finalize and publish detailed guidelines later this year. The guidance will cover newer types of transactions including staking and airdrops.

Moon Kyung-ho, director general of the income tax policy division at the Ministry of Economy and Finance, made the comments on May 7 at an emergency forum on virtual-asset taxation held at the National Assembly Members’ Office Building.

Academics and crypto industry participants at the forum criticized the tax framework as insufficiently clear, arguing that confusion for taxpayers would be unavoidable. A key issue was the lack of explicit tax provisions for DeFi, staking and airdrops, beyond simple trading gains, raising fears of what participants called “black box” taxation.

Moon said the law does not explicitly enumerate every new type of digital-asset transaction, but the enforcement decree authorizes the commissioner of the National Tax Service to set detailed standards. Those rules will be made more specific through a publicly released National Tax Service notice.

He added that authorities are not setting the standards unilaterally and are working to reflect market conditions. The National Tax Service has held multiple working-level meetings with South Korea’s five virtual-asset operators that run won-based exchanges while preparing the draft notice. The aim is to establish clear criteria for what falls within the scope of taxable income.

Moon also said the decision to classify virtual-asset income as miscellaneous income, rather than capital gains, was meant to capture these newer forms of transactions more efficiently within the tax system.

Taxing such income as capital gains would require the law to list every transaction type individually, he said. Classifying it as miscellaneous income allows authorities to apply the broader standard of “income arising from transfers and lending,” helping reduce the risk of tax disputes over income generated through methods such as staking and airdrops.

Moon said preparations for the computer systems needed to enforce the new tax rules are also on track. The National Tax Service has already built an electronic system to collect and manage virtual-asset transaction data, he said.