Two filings fall due almost immediately, and both are dated from when your people started work rather than from when you registered. Here is the full cycle — setup, monthly, quarterly, annual — and the three deadlines entrants most often discover after they have passed.
Most groups entering Korea plan the compliance calendar from the date of incorporation or branch registration. Korean law does not. The obligations that matter first are dated from the moment a taxable presence exists — and that is a question of fact about where your people were and what they were doing, not a question of paperwork. Groups that register late usually find that the first deadlines passed before anyone had reason to think about them.
These three follow directly from having a presence in Korea. Two of them run from the activity, not the registration.
| Filing | Deadline | Dated from |
|---|---|---|
| Report of a domestic place of business, with a balance sheet as at the date of establishment | Within two months | The date you come to have one — i.e. when the activity physically begins |
| Business registration — for each place of business | Within 20 days of commencing business (application may be made before) | Commencement of business |
| Foreign exchange notification for a branch, with the designated bank | Before establishment | — |
A change to what was reported in the first of these is itself reportable, within 15 days.
The date the clock starts is established from records, not from intention.
Personnel movement, contracts, site attendance — these decide it. In a closely comparable tribunal case the date was fixed at the day the company's first engineer entered Korea. If your team has already been on the ground for some months, the first task is not to file but to establish the dates from your own records, because the answer determines what, if anything, is already late and how far the statutory reduction of the penalty still runs.
Once registered, the calendar is regular and does not vary much by industry.
| What | When | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Withholding on employment income and on payments to non-residents | By the 10th of the following month | The most frequent filing you will have. Treaty rates have to be applied and supported at the time of payment, not afterwards |
| Payroll and the four national insurances | Monthly | Requires a registered Korean place of business. Assigned foreign staff may be exempt from home-country-covered social security under a totalisation agreement — typically worth around 10–11% of covered pay |
| VAT returns | Quarterly | Input VAT recovery depends on registration timing — see below |
| Corporate income tax return | Within three months of financial year end, plus an interim return at the half year | Local income tax is charged separately on the same tax base, not as a surcharge on the tax figure |
| Transfer pricing documentation (master and local file) | Within twelve months of year end | Only above both thresholds — but head office dealings count. See the FAQ |
Korean suppliers charge 10% VAT from your first purchase, whether you are registered or not, and whether payment comes from a Korean account or from head office. That VAT is recoverable only if business registration was applied for within 20 days after the end of the half-year VAT period in which the supplier issued the tax invoice.
Suppliers usually start invoicing well before anyone turns their mind to registration. On a project of any size the amount at stake is rarely trivial, and it is quietly lost rather than refused — nobody sends a notice. Check the date of your earliest supplier invoice before anything else.
Settling Korean costs from a head office or regional account is common and perfectly workable, but it has three consequences. The input VAT position above is unchanged. The Korean books must still record the expense and the corresponding head office funding, and if that link is not documented as it happens, deductibility is exposed. And where the paying entity sits in a different jurisdiction from the contracting one, the applicable treaty — and with it the withholding analysis and beneficial ownership question — may change. That is worth settling when the payment route is designed, not afterwards.
The typical treaty article permits deduction of expenses incurred for the purposes of the Korean operation, including executive and general administrative expenses, regardless of where they were incurred. The same article expressly denies deduction for amounts paid to the head office as royalties, interest, fees or similar payments.
On the allowable side, Korean enforcement is documentary and strict. In one published tribunal case a US company's Korean place of business had paid KRW 3.49 billion in management fees. The service agreement was produced. Evidence of the services actually rendered, and of the total cost pool and its allocation basis, was not. The entire amount was disallowed.
The practical conclusion is that head office allocations need three things every month: a cost pool, an allocation basis, and evidence of delivery. This is a matter of how the books are designed at the outset. Reconstructing it during an audit costs far more than building it in.
VAT registration is in principle per place of business, and each project site can qualify as one. But the VAT Act allows a business with two or more places of business to register on a single-entity basis through the tax office for its head office. Combined with the determination of where corporate tax is payable, this lets a multi-site Korean operation run on one registration, one set of VAT returns and one corporate tax return rather than a parallel set for every site.
This is worth deciding at registration. Consolidating registrations afterwards is possible but materially more expensive than getting the structure right once.
The order matters. Establish first, from records, whether a taxable presence already exists and from what date; that single fact determines whether you are setting up a calendar or also regularising a period that has already run. Then register — with the multi-site question settled — and only then build the monthly cycle, with the head office allocation documented from month one rather than reconstructed later.
We run this work for foreign-invested companies in English end to end, and report monthly in your group's format. If you are at the stage of planning, the useful first exchange is a short written one about dates and headcount.
Basis. This note reflects the Corporate Income Tax Act (domestic place of business and its reporting, corporate tax return and interim return), the Value-Added Tax Act (business registration per place of business, single-entity registration, and input tax), the Income Tax Act (withholding and its monthly return), the Local Tax Act (local income tax), the Act on International Tax Adjustment and its Enforcement Decree (transfer pricing documentation thresholds, including head office dealings) and the Foreign Exchange Transactions Regulation, together with the applicable tax treaty in each case. It is general information as at September 2026, not advice on a specific situation — thresholds and treaty positions vary. Please take advice before acting.
Earlier, and this is the single most common surprise. The report of a domestic place of business is due within two months of the date you come to have one, and that date is when the activity physically begins in Korea, not when you registered anything. It is a question of fact established from records — when your people first arrived and what they were doing — rather than from intention. In a closely comparable tribunal case the date was fixed at the day the company's first engineer entered Korea. If your team has already been on the ground, establish the dates from records before you file anything.
No, and it creates a specific loss. Your Korean suppliers will charge 10% VAT whether the payment comes from Seoul or from abroad. Without a Korean business registration that VAT is simply an unrecoverable cost. With one it is recoverable, but only if the registration was applied for within 20 days after the end of the half-year VAT period in which the supplier issued the tax invoice. Separately, the books still have to record the expense and the corresponding head office funding even when the cash never touches a Korean account — if that link is not documented contemporaneously, deductibility is exposed.
Partly. The typical treaty article allows expenses including executive and general administrative expenses to be deducted regardless of where they were incurred, but expressly denies deduction for amounts paid to the head office as royalties, interest, fees or similar payments. Korean enforcement on the allowable side is evidence-driven and strict. In one published tribunal case a US company's Korean place of business paid KRW 3.49 billion in management fees; the service agreement was produced, but evidence of the services actually rendered and of the total cost pool and its allocation basis was not. The entire amount was disallowed. In practice the allocation needs a monthly cost pool, an allocation basis, and evidence of delivery.
In principle VAT registration is per place of business, and each project site can be one. But the VAT Act allows a business with two or more places of business to register on a single-entity basis with the tax office for the head office. Combined with the determination of the place of tax payment for corporate tax, a multi-site Korean operation can run on one registration, one set of VAT returns and one corporate tax return. Getting this right at registration is substantially cheaper than restructuring registrations afterwards.
Two thresholds have to be met together: Korean revenue above a statutory level and related-party transactions above a lower one, with filing due within twelve months of the financial year end. The point most groups miss is that dealings between the head office and its Korean place of business are expressly counted. Where the head office supplies major equipment or services directly into the Korean project, the threshold can be met even though the Korean operation's own margin is modest. This should be tested early, not discovered at the filing deadline.
The six-month test, the four objections groups usually raise, and what 29 published Korean cases show about when an assessment is overturned.
Read the guideTell us when your people first started work in Korea and roughly how many there are. That is usually enough to say whether you are planning a calendar or also catching one up.