The government plans to overhaul the comprehensive real estate tax system to impose taxes based on the value of assets held by homeowners instead of on the number of properties they own.

According to the finance ministry on Thursday, the government plans to announce in a week ways to revise tax laws to that end.

The government is expected to make such changes amid criticism that current heavy taxes applied on multiple-home owners have undermined fairness in taxation rather than meeting the intended objective of stabilizing the housing market.

Currently, the owners of multiple properties are slapped with a tax rate of one-point-two to six percent, higher than the zero-point-six to three percent range applied on people who have one home.

As a result, a person who owns two apartments worth hundreds of millions of won faces a greater tax burden than a person who has one apartment worth billions of won.

Such tax rates were introduced from 2019. Previously, the rate of the comprehensive real estate tax stood at zero-point-five percent to two percent regardless of the number of homes owned.