Asian Junkie Asian pop. Without discretion.
In news that is unfortunately not all that surprising, SM Entertainment has been ordered to pay $18 million following an investigation into taxes by the National Tax Service Seoul Regional Tax Office .
It was described as an irregular tax investigation, known as a “special tax investigation,” after suspicions of tax evasion. Reports stated that taxation authorities had detected the outflow of company capital in Lee Soo Man’s corporate transactions. SM Entertainment had responded by saying it was a regular tax investigation that began last September and it was the company’s first in six years. They stated, “We earnestly took part and are awaiting the results.” On February 5, SM Entertainment announced that it has been ordered to pay an additional collection amount of 20.2 billion won following the tax investigation. This is described as 3.19 percent of SM Entertainment’s capital. SM Entertainment has stated, “After we receive the tax notice, we plan to pay the additional collection amount before the deadline of the end of March, and we plan to carry out an appeal process after that.”
This is nothing new for the company, which has previously been investigated in both 2009 and 2014, with the latter resulting in a $9.1 million bill. That’s not even to mention the totally legal money being funneled to Lee Soo Man’s private company that had shareholders outraged but seemed to quietly go away.
