South Korea to meet crypto exchanges amid calls for tax delay

South Korea’s senior finance officials are reportedly set to meet crypto exchanges on Tuesday as calls to postpone a planned cryptocurrency tax are heating up ahead of its scheduled implementation in January.

According to Yonhap, the government is planning to hold a consultation on crypto taxation, with representatives coming from Upbit, Bithumb, Coinone, DigitalX and Gopax, along with executives of the Digital Asset Exchange Alliance, known as DAXA.

Government officials attending include Kwon Dae-young, first vice minister of finance and economy, and Yoo Young-jun, director general for digital financial policy at the Financial Services Commission.

South Korean regulators have delayed the crypto tax three times, with the latest delay pushing the start date to 2027 amid political disagreement and industry pushback over exchange readiness and the threshold level.

An exchange official told Yonhap on Sunday that unresolved transaction rules and limited time to prepare infrastructure supported postponing the tax.

“Standards for different transaction types have not yet been finalized, and time is running short for practical preparations on the infrastructure side,” an exchange official told Yonhap. “There is a shared view in favor of postponing the start of taxation.”

On Friday, Democratic Party of Korea lawmaker Park Min-gyu introduced a bill seeking to postpone the tax until Jan. 1 of the second year after South Korea begins sharing data under OECD’s Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework (CARF). With the first exchange expected in 2027, taxation would begin in 2029.

Related: South Korea plans cybersecurity overhaul after attacks hit banks, crypto firms