"An Annual Salary at a Major Company in Three Days"—Yet This Job Does Not Even Properly Pay Taxes

[Financial News]  The so-called "social media market," where products are sold through social networking services such as Instagram and YouTube, has grown more than 18-fold in four years. However, concerns have been raised that the tax system has failed to keep pace with the rapidly expanding market and urgently needs to be improved.
According to Yonhap News Agency and other outlets on the 27th, data that Moon Jin-seok, a lawmaker of the Democratic Party of Korea who sits on the National Assembly's Strategy and Finance Committee, received from the National Tax Service (NTS) showed that the business income reported in 2024 by operators whose primary business was listed as "social media market business" totaled 33.306 billion won. This was more than 18 times the 1.73 billion won recorded in 2020.
Over the same period, the number of operators also surged more than sixfold, from 287 to 1,838. Analysts say that selling products directly to consumers through Instagram and YouTube, without going through traditional online shopping malls, has established itself as a new distribution channel.
The Korea Economic Daily reported that Lee Eun-yul, who appeared as Jung-sook from season 20 of ENA and SBS PLUS's "I'm Solo," drew attention last July after posting content on her social media titled "The Reality of an Influencer Who Quit a Major Company." At the time, she said, "After quitting my job at a major company, I earned my annual salary from my former employer, LG Electronics, through a single group purchase in just three days."
The problem is that these transactions can easily evade the tax system. Transactions between individuals on social media are usually conducted through private channels such as direct messages (DMs), making it difficult to verify whether a transaction took place or collect relevant data. As a result, the NTS explained that such transactions are rarely detected through the existing system, which primarily collects sales data from tax invoices, credit cards and cash receipts.
The NTS told Moon's office, "Beyond collecting data on individual transactions through tips, such as reports of the non-issuance of cash receipts filed by the parties to a transaction, there are limits to directly managing the tax base." It added, "To eliminate blind spots in taxation, we will make multifaceted efforts, including revitalizing the reward program for reporting the non-issuance of cash receipts and strengthening ongoing monitoring."
Moon emphasized, "We need to establish a data-collection system suited to new forms of transactions so that a structure in which only those who report their income honestly lose out does not become entrenched."
[email protected] Kim Su-yeon Reporter