Your Korean Withholding Tax Receipt, Explained

The withholding tax receipt is not a statement that you earned some money last year. It is a one-page annual tax settlement: what you were paid, what was exempt, which deductions applied, what tax was finally owed, what had already been taken, and how the difference was settled.

A payslip shows one month. This shows what those twelve months added up to after the tax office’s arithmetic was finished.

Same document, two destinations: you get the receipt, the tax office gets the payment statement.

Two documents, one set of figures

Your employer files an employment income payment statement with the National Tax Service. What you receive is the withholding receipt — the same annual income and withholding result, in certificate form.

For a continuing employee the settlement is normally done with the February payroll of the following year. Someone who leaves mid-year gets a leaver’s settlement when the final month’s pay is issued.

The calculation, in the order the form uses

This is the chain the National Tax Service actually works in, and each figure means something different from the one above it.

annual employment income
  − non-taxable income
  = gross salary

gross salary
  − employment income deduction
  = employment income amount
      → personal, pension, special and other deductions
      = tax base
          → 6–45% progressive rates
          = calculated tax
              → reductions and tax credits
              = determined tax

Determined tax is the year’s actual bill

Not the monthly withholding. Determined tax is what you owed for the year once every deduction and credit was applied.

withheld across the year   ₩6,000,000
determined tax             ₩5,000,000
                            ─────────
refund                     ₩1,000,000

Reverse it — determined tax of ₩7,000,000 against ₩6,000,000 withheld — and ₩1,000,000 is collected from you instead.

When an immigration office or a bank asks what you paid in tax for a year, determined tax is the figure they mean. Why the monthly number is a prepayment rather than a rate is in the year-end settlement for foreign employees.

The sign on the balance line is the answer

The settlement formula is:

determined tax − tax already paid − special payment tax = balance

So −850,000 is ₩850,000 back. +420,000 is ₩420,000 out.

Check both tax columns

Income tax and local income tax appear separately, and local income tax is generally 10% of the income tax.

income tax        ₩3,000,000
local income tax    ₩300,000

A settlement read only on the income tax column will not match what actually lands in your account. Both have their own balance.

A refund is paid by your employer, not by the tax office

This surprises people every February.

Employment income refunds run through the employer as withholding agent — usually in the payroll that carries the settlement, sometimes as a separate payment.

The flat rate: check it, do not infer it

If you elected the 19% flat rate, the computation should follow that election rather than the progressive scale — and most deductions and credits are excluded from it by design.

Two inferences to avoid:

Ask payroll or the tax adviser whether the flat-rate application was actually filed for you. The comparison of the two methods, and where the crossover really sits, is in the 19% flat rate: when it beats the brackets.

Whether you were treated as a resident or a non-resident also changes what was taxed and which deductions were available — income tax for foreigners: resident or not.

Korean to English, line by line

Official translations used by a receiving institution may differ, so for an overseas body ask what translation format they require before you commission one.

Changing jobs mid-year

Where you worked at two employers in one year — January to May at A, June to December at B — B’s year-end settlement needs to include A’s income and withholding.

That is what A’s withholding receipt is for. Without it, the income is not aggregated, and you may have to file your own global income tax return the following May instead.

Keep the final payslip and the receipt together, as PDF and on paper. For anyone leaving Korea, add it to the same list as the pension and tax steps in leaving Korea: tax, pension and what you are owed.

Employer copy and Hometax copy do different jobs

For anything consequential — a visa application, a loan, your own filing — check that the two agree. The current form is appended form 24 as revised on 20 March 2026, which is also why guidance written around item numbers should be treated with suspicion.

It is not a certificate of income amount

These are confused constantly, and the confusion costs a trip.

If an immigration office or a bank asks for a certificate of income amount, the withholding receipt does not automatically substitute for it.

Banks separate last year’s confirmed income from this year’s

For lending and credit assessment the receipt evidences the previous year. Someone who recently changed jobs is not fully described by it, and a bank may additionally want a certificate of employment, the current contract, recent payslips, salary deposit records or a certificate of income amount.

Strong proof of what you earned. Not, by itself, proof of what you earn now.

The five numbers to check first

Do not read the form top to bottom. Read these:

gross salary
  → tax base
  → determined tax
  → tax already paid
  → balance due or refund

Then, as a foreign employee, four more:

How those components looked month by month before they were aggregated is in reading your Korean payslip.

The value of this document is not that it holds a lot of numbers. It is that one page lets you verify what you earned, what was taxed, what was finally owed, and how the gap against what you had already paid was closed — for a year you otherwise only saw twelve pieces of.