Korean Home Acquisition Tax Calculator

Buying a home in Korea means paying more than the purchase price before you can register it: acquisition tax with its attached local education tax and rural special tax, the broker's fee, and the fee for the legal agent who handles registration. Enter the purchase price, how many homes your household will own after the purchase, whether the home is in a regulated zone, the floor area, whether a company is buying, and whether this is a temporary second home, and the calculator returns the taxes and fees separately and the total cash needed including the price itself.

There is no single rate. A single-home buyer pays a progressive rate between 1% and 3% depending on price, but multiple-home owners and companies face heavy rates of 8% or 12%. On the same ₩800 million home the tax swings by tens of millions of won depending on which home it is for you, so half of this calculator is the test that fixes the rate and the other half is multiplication.

Anyone who has decided to buy and is putting together the financing. If the loan and savings are sized to the purchase price alone, the tax and fees come up short on registration day. Knowing the total cash needed before signing tells you how much more to line up.

Anyone who already owns a home and is buying another must run it first. When the heavy rate applies, the acquisition tax multiplies to a level that can change the decision itself. People who briefly own two homes because of a move use it to see whether the temporary second-home exemption spares them, and to check whether a spouse's or parent's home gets counted into the household total.

The standard rates come from 지방세법 제11조제1항제8호: 1% up to ₩600 million, 3% above ₩900 million, and in between a rate given by the formula "price × 2 ÷ ₩300 million − 3" expressed as a percentage and calculated to four decimal places. The heavy rates come from 제13조의2. In a regulated zone a second home is charged 8% and a third or further home 12%; outside a regulated zone the thresholds shift by one, so a third home is 8% and a fourth or further home 12%. A company pays 12% from its first home regardless of count. A temporary second home, where the previous home is sold within the prescribed period, is excluded from the heavy rate.

The sequence is: first decide whether the heavy rate applies from the company, temporary-second-home, home-count and regulated-zone inputs, which fixes the acquisition tax rate. Local education tax under 제151조 is 10% of the acquisition rate at standard rates (0.1% up to ₩600 million, 0.3% above ₩900 million) and a fixed 0.4% under the heavy rate. Rural special tax is nil at 85㎡ or less and 0.2% above that. The three rates are applied to the price to give the tax, the broker's fee (at the capped rate for the price band) and registration fee are added to give the fees, and the price is added on top for the total cash needed.

Take an apartment of 85㎡ or less in a regulated zone bought for ₩800 million by a buyer who will then own one home. ₩800 million sits between ₩600 million and ₩900 million, so the rate is 8 × 2 ÷ 3 − 3, or 2.3333%, and the acquisition tax is ₩18,666,400. Local education tax at 10% of that rate, 0.23%, is ₩1.84 million, and there is no rural special tax because of the floor area. The tax comes to ₩20,506,400. Add the broker's fee of ₩3.2 million at the capped rate and ₩1 million for registration, and the fees are ₩4.2 million; with the price, the total cash needed is ₩824,706,400.

If the same purchase makes it the buyer's second home, the regulated zone brings the 8% heavy rate: ₩64 million of acquisition tax plus ₩3.2 million of local education tax at 0.4%, ₩67.2 million in tax alone, and total cash of ₩871.4 million. One extra home opens a gap of more than ₩46.7 million in tax.

The biggest is counting only homes in your own name. The heavy-rate test is by household, so homes owned by a spouse or lineal relatives who share your household are added in. Your first home in your own name is a second home if a parent in the same household already owns one. The second is believing the heavy rate starts at two homes outside regulated zones as well; there it starts at three. The reverse error, applying the standard rate to a second home inside a regulated zone, is just as common.

The third is rounding the ₩600 million to ₩900 million band to "about 2%". The rate changes with every price in that band and is calculated to four decimal places, so the difference runs to hundreds of thousands of won. The fourth is budgeting for the tax but forgetting the broker's and registration fees. Finally, this calculator does not include the first-time buyer relief, the exclusion for low-value homes, or the additional rural special tax on heavy-rate acquisitions. If any of those apply, check with the local district office.