The government is considering slapping taxes on four-point-four trillion won worth of financial assets held by Samsung Electronics Chairman Lee Kun-hee under borrowed-name bank accounts.
 
An official of the Financial Supervisory Commission(FSC) said Sunday that the Real Name Financial Transactions Act stipulates that a 90-percent withholding tax shall be deducted from interest or dividend income generated from transactions of financial assets under non-real name accounts. 
 
If the law interprets Lee's alleged borrowed name bank accounts as his financial assets under non-real name accounts, the National Tax Service could impose hundreds of billions of won in tax on the assets.
 
In 2008, the prosecution found funds under borrowed name accounts which had been nominally entrusted to other people to protect Samsung's management rights of the group. 
 
Rep. Park Yong-jin of the ruling Democratic Party recently said during a parliamentary audit of the FSC that Lee promised to register the borrowed name accounts under his real name and pay related taxes, but did not keep the promise.