By Yoon Ja-young
Staff Reporter

The National Tax Service (NTS) has launched a tax probe on 150 high-income self-employed people, including huge private teaching institute owners, famous lecturers on the private education scene and professionals such as lawyers and doctors.

In a previous probe on 130 people, the tax agency found that they were omitting nearly half of their income when filing income taxes.

The tax agency said that it was looking into 84 people within the private education industry and 66 high-income professionals suspected of evading income tax.

``We selected those highly suspected of evading taxes, based on their tax filings and transactions during the past three years,'' said a spokesman at the NTS.

While the market here is growing explosively, the private education scene has been a hotbed of tax evasion. Private institutes often induce parents to pay in cash so that they can leave out income. Some lecturers make big money through tutoring, but they rarely pay taxes.

Lawyers also often evade taxes, refusing to get credit cards, and omitting bonuses they get for winning a lawsuit.

According to the tax agency, an investigation in May found that high-income self-employed people omitted 40.9 percent of their income on average when filing tax returns. It looked into 130 suspicious people during that probe, who said they had earned 294.8 billion won when they had actually garnered 516 billion won.

The private education industry and wedding halls were the top tax evaders, having omitted an average 46.7 percent of their income when filing for taxes.

A cram school in Gyeonggi Province, for example, left out 2.6 billion won of income by inducing students to pay in cash. A dentist omitted 1.4 billion won in income by receiving cash for tooth implant surgery.

The tax agency has carried out 10 special tax probes on the high-income self-employed since 2005.

chizpizza@koreatimes.co.kr