National Tax Service Commissioner Lim Kwang-hyun signs a working agreement with Belgian Tax Commissioner Philippe Van de Velde on the 11th (local time). Photo courtesy of the National Tax Service
The National Tax Service (NTS) has expanded its international cooperation on delinquent tax collection to three major European countries.
NTS Commissioner Lim Kwang-hyun visited Hungary, Belgium and the United Kingdom in succession, holding bilateral meetings with each country’s tax commissioner and signing a “working agreement on collection cooperation,” the agency said Friday.
On the 8th (local time), Lim met with Ferenc Vágújhelyi, Hungary’s tax commissioner, in Budapest and signed a new working agreement on collection cooperation. The two sides shared cases of digital innovation in tax administration using artificial intelligence (AI) and explored directions for advancing electronic tax administration.
On the 11th, Lim held the first-ever Korea-Belgium tax commissioners’ meeting with Philippe Van de Velde, Belgium’s tax commissioner, in Brussels and signed a working agreement on collection cooperation. The Belgian side proposed participation in the “Forum on Tax Debt Management” under the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which Belgium currently chairs, and Lim responded that Korea “will actively participate from the next meeting.”
Lim then met with John-Paul Marks, the UK’s tax commissioner, in London on the 13th. The two signed a working agreement on collection cooperation for efficient enforcement and agreed to actively cooperate in recovering assets of each country’s tax delinquents located in the other’s jurisdiction.
Lim also requested cooperation from each country’s tax commissioner regarding specific suspected tax evaders currently subject to overseas asset tracing and recovery procedures. He requested swift seizure procedures against a foreign professional athlete who had competed in Korea, failed to pay taxes and subsequently transferred to a European league. For Korean delinquents listed as high-amount habitual tax evaders, the two sides discussed conducting simultaneous tax investigations and sharing investigative information.