Invest1 publisher2 min readPublished
Dividends carried 89% of the financial income 1,606 Korean minors reported for 2024
National Tax Service data obtained by Rep. Moon Jin-seok puts 1,606 South Korean minors, five of them aged 1, above the 20 million won filing trigger for 2024. His stated remedy is tighter tax-office follow-up on gifts made in children's names.
The Investor · Invest desk
What happened
- National Tax Service data obtained by Rep. Moon Jin-seok shows 1,606 South Korean minors filed comprehensive income tax returns for 2024 because their interest and dividend income passed the reporting line.
- The income those minors reported totalled 166.91 billion won for the year, an average of 104 million won per filer.
- Financial income accounted for 154.689 billion won of that, made up of 137.678 billion won of dividends and 17.012 billion won of interest, with 12.22 billion won from other sources.
- Five of the filers were aged 1, with 197 million won of financial income between them, and 122 filers in all were aged five or younger.
- The series peaked at 3,987 filers in 2020, up from 2,068 in 2019, before dropping to 1,327 in 2021.
Compiled by The InvestorSomething wrong?How this is made
Why it matters
- constraint The 20 million won trigger sets the floor of the dataset: a child with 19 million won of dividend income files nothing and appears in none of the six years, so 1,606 counts threshold crossings and cannot size how many minors hold income-producing assets.
- decision Moon's stated remedy runs through the tax office's own practice, which makes follow-up on advance gifts and borrowed-name holdings a caseload decision at the National Tax Service.
- exposure The filers are children, but Moon's reading points at the parent generation, so the households that registered dividend-paying shares to a minor are the reachable party in any follow-up.
Dividends were 89 percent of the financial income on those 1,606 returns, and interest the other 11 percent [6][7][1]. Per filer that is 85.7 million won of dividend income each [3]. A further 12.22 billion won of the reported total came from other sources [6].
The age bands say more once divided by the number of birth years in each. No filer was younger than 1, so the 122 children aged five or under spread across five single ages, about 24 filers per year of age [4][8][5]. Among school-age filers, 424 were aged 6 to 11, or 71 a year; 376 aged 12 to 14 is 125 a year; 489 aged 15 to 17 is 163 [9][5]. At the single age of 18 there were 195 [9]. That last figure runs 2.8 times the per-year rate of the 6-to-11 band [5]. Five one-year-olds averaged 39.4 million won each, close to double the 20 million won that requires a comprehensive return [4][3][7].
Moon, a Democratic Party member of the National Assembly's Strategy and Finance Committee, obtained the figures from the National Tax Service and released them on Sept. 13 [2]. "Minors earning tens of millions of won in financial income can be seen as the result of the parent generation's assets being passed down intact," he said [11]. "The National Tax Service needs to strengthen its follow-up management of advance gifts made in the names of minors and of assets held under borrowed names," Moon said [12].
The recent direction is up from a low. From 1,327 in 2021 the count went to 1,395, then 1,461, then 1,606 [10]. That adds 279 filers over three years and leaves 2024 sitting 2,381 short of the 2020 level [6].
In my view the data supports a case for audit resourcing and little beyond it. Reviewing 1,606 returns is a finite job, and the 122 filings from children aged five or under are the slice where a child's own earnings explain the least [8]. Two other readings fit the same numbers. A portfolio gifted years ago can cross the 20 million won trigger on dividend growth alone, with no new transfer [3]; and the ladder by age is what you would see if teenagers were aging into the threshold on holdings they already had [9]. Income totals in the release cover 2024, so per-filer income in earlier years cannot be set against 2024's 104 million won average [5]. That comparison is the test: a rising count with flat income per filer points to new transfers, and a flat count with rising income per filer points to markets.
What to watch
- Whether the Strategy and Finance Committee, where Moon sits, turns the data into a bill on gift reporting for accounts held in minors' names.
- Whether the National Tax Service reports follow-up work on the 122 returns filed for children aged five or under.
- Whether the 2025 filing-year count passes the 2,068 recorded for 2019, which would put the series back above its pre-2020 level.