No conventional corporate tax on domestic state-owned enterprises (profit remittance to the state instead); foreign-invested businesses in the rest of the country pay 25% (14% in the Rason Special Economic Zone, 10% for preferential sectors like advanced technology and infrastructure).
Personal income tax was officially abolished for DPRK citizens in 1974 under the Tax Abolition Law; foreign nationals working in special economic zones may be subject to zone-specific tax regulations.
No general VAT or sales tax; the centrally planned economy relies on state-controlled pricing rather than consumption taxation.
Confirmed directly via the primary statutory text (DPRK Law on Foreign Investment, via WIPO Lex): the law applies to any foreign-invested business and foreign individual doing business or earning income within DPRK territory, and notably also applies to any Korean compatriot residing outside DPRK territory who does business or earns income within DPRK territory. Standard residency-based taxation concepts do not apply to DPRK citizens generally, given personal income tax was officially abolished in 1974, confirmed via TaxAtlas. Foreign investors and workers in special economic zones are subject to zone-specific tax regulations.
No conventional CFC regime was identified in available sources this session. However, confirmed directly via the primary statutory text: a foreign-invested enterprise registered in DPRK must also pay enterprise income tax on income earned through its branches, agencies, representatives, or subsidiaries established outside DPRK territory - functioning as a worldwide-income taxation clause for DPRK-registered foreign-invested enterprises specifically, distinct from (though related in effect to) a Western-style CFC attribution regime.
No statutory thin capitalization ratio was identified in available sources this session. This is a genuine gap rather than a confirmed absence, consistent with the extremely limited public documentation of DPRK's domestic tax administration generally.
No domestic FBAR/Form 8938-equivalent was identified, and given DPRK's extensive isolation from the international financial system, institutional-level CRS/FATCA participation is not applicable in any meaningful sense. Separately and independently of DPRK's own law, US citizens and Green Card holders remain obligated to file FinCEN Form 114 (FBAR) once aggregate foreign accounts exceed USD 10,000 for any account genuinely held, and potentially Form 8938 - though as a practical and legal matter, extensive US and multilateral UN sanctions severely restrict or prohibit most US-person financial dealings connected to North Korea in the first place, a separate and more immediately consequential constraint than the tax filing question. Notably, even a generic tax-data aggregator (taxratesbycountry.com) explicitly flagged in its own methodology notes that "no publicly auditable tax data" exists for DPRK and removed its rate listings as of May 2026 - independent confirmation of how genuinely limited reliable information is for this jurisdiction, beyond the primary statutory text located and used on this page.
North Korea's treaty network is narrow but not empty. Confirmed via Russia's own official published list of its double tax treaty partners: Russia has a double tax agreement in force with the DPRK (North Korea). Separately confirmed via a tax treaty database: North Korea has a comprehensive double tax agreement with Indonesia for the avoidance of double taxation and prevention of fiscal evasion on income taxes. Given North Korea's extensive international isolation and sanctions status, further comprehensive partners beyond these two are unlikely to be numerous, but a full named-partner list was not compiled and should be confirmed directly with a specialist in DPRK-related sanctions and tax matters before relying on it for a specific transaction.