Korea calls crypto exchanges to the table — again, as the taxman waits for 2027 🪙

Senior South Korean finance officials are set to meet representatives from the country's major cryptocurrency exchanges on Tuesday to discuss a planned crypto taxation that has been delayed three times and is now scheduled to take effect in January 2027, according to Yonhap. The consultation will bring together officials from Upbit, Bithumb, Coinone, DigitalX and Gopax, along with executives of the Digital Asset Exchange Alliance, known as DAXA. Government participants 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.

Industry calls to postpone the tax have intensified ahead of the planned rollout. An exchange official told Yonhap on Sunday that unresolved transaction rules and limited preparation time support a further delay. "Standards for different transaction types have not yet been finalized, and time is running short for practical preparations on the infrastructure side," the official said, adding that "there is a shared view in favor of postponing the start of taxation."

Separately, Democratic Party of Korea lawmaker Park Min-gyu introduced a bill on Friday seeking to postpone the tax until Jan. 1 of the second year after South Korea begins sharing data under the OECD's Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework (CARF), which would push the start of taxation to 2029 given the first expected data exchange in 2027. South Korean regulators have previously delayed the crypto tax three times, citing political disagreement and industry concerns over exchange readiness and the threshold level.

The meeting comes amid broader regulatory attention to digital assets in South Korea, where the government has also announced plans for a cybersecurity overhaul following recent attacks targeting banks and crypto firms.