South Korea Enacts 2026 Tax Reform for QDMTT Implementation
January 9, 2026
On December 23, 2025, Korea enacted Law number 21215 to implement the 2026 Tax Reform. This includes a QDMTT from January 1, 2026.
Article 7.5.2 of the OECD Model Rules provides that this is a five-year election and it treats the GloBE income of the investment entity as accruing to the constituent entity owner in proportion to its ownership entitlement.
It is only available where the constituent entity owner is subject to tax on a fair value accounting method on its interest in the investment entity (such as under a mark-to-market accounting policy) and the tax rate levied on the income for the owner is at least 15%.
The purpose behind the election is to align the GloBE rules with the domestic tax treatment for the owner of the investment entity. The election applies to both directly held and indirectly held investment entities.
Under domestic law, the constituent entity owner would be subject to tax on the income of the investment entity anyway (calculated on fair value changes). This election simply pushes up the income to the constituent entity owner for the GloBE income calculation to match the timing under domestic law.
One of the criticisms of this election is that in some countries, such as Germany, changes of the fair value of the ownership interest in the investment entities are not taxed. In others, such as France, some investors are taxed on changes of the fair value as required but others are not and are taxed on the historic
value of their ownership interests.
Therefore, this election is either not applicable in some jurisdictions or only on a few investment entities or insurance investment entities in others.
Note that once an election is made a constituent entity owner of an investment entity shouldn’t include any fair value adjustment even if when looked at separately it may use a fair value basis for accounting purposes. If there are any fair value adjustments included in the financial accounting income or loss they should be excluded from GloBE income.
To include such adjustments would result in the income being included in GloBE income twice given the tax transparency election already allocates the share of the investment entity income to the constituent entity.
In this case, if we assume P Co 1 and P Co 2 were subject to the mark-to-mark basis on their investment in the investment fund, they could file a tax transparency election.
The income of the fund, which is likely to be calculated on a fair value basis under accounting standards, would be included in P Co 1 and P Co 2’s GloBE income.
If the income was for instance 1,000,000 euros, P Co 1 would include 750,000 euros and P Co 2 would include 250,000 of income.
The substance-based income exclusion also applies to the constituent entity owners on a tax transparent basis. In other words, the constituent entity owner can take into account its share of the payroll costs and tangible assets in the jurisdiction when calculating excess profits.
The Tax Transparency Election treats the GloBE income of the investment entity as accruing to the constituent entity owner in proportion to its ownership entitlement.
The purpose behind the election is to align the GloBE rules with the domestic tax treatment for the owner of the investment entity.
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