South Korea will clamp down on large businesses and affluent individuals who try to evade taxes by concealing their wealth abroad, the customs office said Monday.
The National Tax Service (NTS) said it plans to scrutinize financial and asset transaction records and deliberate deletion of foreign earnings designed to make it hard for authorities to determine the wealth of individuals and companies.
Emphasis will be placed on finding stock holdings, bank accounts and properties listed under a third person's name, practices that are designed to make it hard to levy appropriate taxes.
The move aims to ferret out illegal transfer of wealth without payment of related inheritance or transfer taxes, it said.
The measures come as the tax office was able to slap fines worth around 2.77 trillion won (US$2.49 billion) on people and businesses that tried to evade paying their taxes last year by sending or hiding money and assets in foreign countries.
"The plan for this year is to conduct at least 18,300 detailed examinations, which are on par with those carried out last year, but to concentrate more manpower and introduce new screening systems," the office said.
Besides strengthening the probe on the wealthy and large conglomerates, the NTS said it will check earnings of people engaged in wholesale of agricultural and fisheries products to guard against hoarding and unfair profit taking.
Seoul wants to keep annual inflation at around the 3 percent level although recent rises in the prices of farm and fuel products is putting pressure on the government to do more to control costs.