South Korea

In South Korea (Korea), there are statutory provisions codifying the substance over form principle and the step transaction doctrine, which constitute the main conceptual elements of GAARs in many other countries.1 However,the majority of commentators do not consider that Korea has GAARs in its domestic laws.2 In other words, Korea is considered not to have introduced any general anti-avoidance rules per se in its domestic tax laws that are particularly designed to combat only tax avoidance cases. Nevertheless, in some parts of this chapter, the authors consider the substance over form provisions and the step transaction doctrine GAARs, because they are basically general provisions and have functioned as GAARs. In the other parts of the chapter, a distinction will be made between the current statutory provisions and GAARs which have not been introduced in Korea.