South Korean Presidential Candidates Pledge Lower Taxes for Crypto Traders, End to ICO Ban

cryptonews.com:

The new year is off to a flying start for South Korea’s crypto community – who will likely have plenty to celebrate after March’s presidential elections.

As reported yesterday, the two leading candidates in the elections are now apparently trying to outdo one another with their pro-crypto policies in an attempt to win over younger voters. And today, speaking at almost the exact same time at separate events in Seoul, they indicated that they were willing to lift the country’s much-maligned initial coin offering (ICO) ban, Yonhap reported.

Such promises will likely go down well with the nation’s business community, which since 2018’s blanket ban on all forms of domestic token launch, have been forced to operate crypto venture from overseas subsidiaries. Firms such as Hyundai subsidiaries and the internet giant Kakao have launched tokens in Europe and Singapore – and digitized securities proponents were also told their offerings would not be allowed if launched on South Korean soil.

But individual retail traders may have yet more to toast. As reported back in 2020, critics have been vocal in their bitter opposition to the incumbent government’s crypto tax policies. Seoul had introduced a crypto tax law that had been due to take effect this month, forcing traders earning over USD 2,100 a year in profits to pay a flat-rate 20% capital gains tax on their income. Some have stated that this threshold is unreasonably low, particularly as stock market traders who buy and sell KOSPI shares enjoy a circa USD 42,000 threshold.

But the People’s Power Party candidate Yoon Suk-yeol, who along with his Democratic Party rival Lee Jae-myung, was instrumental in exacting a last-minute one-year delay to the tax law in the National Assembly,