'Measure taken to protect taxpayers from disadvantage; we will do our best to restore the system'

A notice reading "Certificate issuance unavailable" is posted at a tax service counter in a Seoul district office on Tuesday, after a failure in the standard local tax information system disrupted Wetax and other local tax services. [Yonhap]
A notice reading "Certificate issuance unavailable" is posted at a tax service counter in a Seoul district office on Tuesday, after a failure in the standard local tax information system disrupted Wetax and other local tax services. [Yonhap]

The government has extended the filing and payment deadline for all local tax categories to July 7 after the rollout of a next-generation local tax system ran into delays.

The Ministry of Interior and Safety said Tuesday that the restoration of local tax services has been held up by system migration work tied to the launch of the South Jeolla Province-Gwangju integrated special city and the administrative restructuring of Incheon.

The ministry had initially extended the filing and payment deadline to July 3, but extended it again — to July 7 — to prevent taxpayers from being penalized as the outage continued.

The ministry began migrating the local tax system at 6 p.m. Monday to reflect administrative changes accompanying the launch of the ninth round of local elections. Service had been scheduled to resume at 9 a.m. Tuesday, but errors arose when data traffic on the standard local tax information system surged beyond expectations, disrupting the restoration.

The outage halted or delayed a wide range of services, including Wetax, the online local tax filing and payment platform, as well as local government service counters, self-service kiosks, and local tax filing, application, payment and certificate issuance through the Government24 portal.

Basic payment functions were restored as of noon Tuesday. Local taxes for which bills have already been issued or assessments completed can now be paid through Wetax, bank transfers, credit cards, telephone banking and ATMs.

Some tax categories requiring advance filing, such as acquisition tax, remain unavailable online. The ministry has instructed local governments to allow taxpayers to file acquisition tax and registration and license tax in person at municipal tax offices using paper forms.

"We will do our best to restore the local tax system," a ministry official said.


won@heraldcorp.com