Revised Joint-Ownership Tax Plan Cuts Banpo Xi Property Tax Estimate from 21.84 Million Won to 16.84 Million Won

The estimated holding tax on a jointly owned Banpo Xi apartment will fall by about 5 million won under South Korea’s revised tax plan, compared with the government’s initial proposal.

A simulation by Woo Byung-tak, a specialist at Shinhan Premier Pathfinder, put next year’s tax bill at about 16.84 million won for an 84-square-meter apartment in Banpo-dong, Seoul’s Seocho district. The case assumes a nonresident married couple owns the home in equal shares and receives no deductions for age or long-term ownership.

The initial tax proposal had produced an estimate of 21.84 million won. The revised plan raises the basic deduction for each spouse from 400 million won to 600 million won, lifting the couple’s combined deduction from 800 million won to 1.2 billion won.

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The planned reduction of the basic deduction for nonresident one-home owners to 900 million won was withdrawn, and the current 1.2 billion won was retained, while the joint-ownership deduction was adjusted to 600 million won each.

The government also abandoned plans to cut the basic deduction for nonresident single-name owners from 1.2 billion won to 900 million won. It will keep the deduction at 1.2 billion won and retain the current 150% cap on tax increases, rather than raising it to 200%.

The revised rules would ease the burden compared with the initial proposal, but the bill would still rise from an estimated 11.71 million won this year to 16.84 million won next year. Single-name ownership of the same apartment would produce an estimated bill of 26.41 million won, about 9.58 million won more than joint ownership. Real estate researcher Ham Young-jin said the changes represented a partial retreat from the planned tax tightening and could send a more lenient signal to the housing market. Debate remains over the market-value ratio scheduled for 2028, when some jointly owned homes in regulated areas could face an 80% ratio instead of the 70% applied to ordinary single-home households.

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The planned tightening of the comprehensive real estate tax on nonresident one-home owners has retreated to some extent, so the housing market may interpret this as a more lenient signal than expected.