Google pays 18.7 billion won in taxes, Naver pays 601.4 billion

Google paid corporate income tax in the 20 billion won range in Korea last year, while domestic platform companies Naver Corporation and Kakao together paid close to 700 billion won.
Global big tech firms have been diverting most of the revenue they generate in Korea to overseas affiliates, slipping through the tax net and fueling an ongoing debate over tax fairness. Even though it is also a foreign-owned company, Woowa Brothers, which operates the Baedal Minjok delivery platform, paid more than five times as much corporate tax last year as Google.
According to the audit report of Google Korea released on the 16th, Google Korea paid about 18.7 billion won in corporate income tax in Korea last year. This is a slight increase from the 17.3 billion won it paid in 2024, but critics argue the amount is far too small given Google’s actual revenue scale in the Korean market.
Including the roughly 8.6 billion won paid by Google Cloud Korea and about 1 billion won paid by Google Payment Korea, the total corporate tax paid by Google’s three Korean entities comes to around 28.3 billion won. YouTube, Google’s flagship service, has secured an overwhelming 48 million users in Korea alone, generating substantial advertising and subscription revenue, yet the combined revenue reported in the three entities’ audit filings is only in the 600 billion won range. This is seen as far too low compared with expert estimates that Google’s revenue in Korea exceeds 10 trillion won.
Academic experts believe global big tech companies are inflating their cost of goods sold, for example by booking large technology royalty payments, in order to minimize their reported profit in Korea and thereby reduce or spread out their tax burden. This is possible because foreign companies are subject to corporate income tax in Korea only on the net profit they earn domestically.
By contrast, Naver Corporation, a leading domestic platform company, paid 601.4 billion won in corporate income tax last year. On the back of record-breaking results of 12.035 trillion won in annual revenue and 2.2081 trillion won in operating profit, its tax bill jumped sharply from 390.2 billion won in 2024. Kakao, which posted 8.0991 trillion won in revenue and 732 billion won in operating profit last year, also paid 94.7 billion won in corporate tax.
Observers warn that such practices by global big tech firms can create a serious competitive disadvantage for domestic IT platform companies, which pay taxes in proportion to their revenue and operating profit. Unlike the global giants, Korean platforms must shoulder both a dense web of regulations and a heavy tax burden.
wongood@fnnews.com Joo Won-gyu Reporter