Developers, graphic designers, foreign language teachers, but also popular YouTubers and influencers who live in Serbia, work for companies from abroad, and do not have registered offices in our country, received a warning from the Tax Administration to pay income tax. If they do not report themselves, taxpayers will find a way to find them and punish them.
This is the essence of the statement of the Tax Administration, which states that natural persons who earn income from abroad, but have not settled all obligations related to the payment of taxes and contributions to salaries, should settle their obligations before starting tax control or filing a request for misdemeanor proceedings. The Tax Administration, on the basis of data on payments from abroad and their comparison with the submitted tax returns on calculated and paid taxes and contributions to the earnings of individuals, found great non-compliance with tax regulations and identified those individuals, the statement said, without giving details on how much the number of cases is a word.
According to the Tax Administration, these revenues are realized on the basis of providing various types of services, and most often it is about software development, translation, holding foreign language classes, promotions, graphic design…
Non-compliance has also been found in those who earn income on social networks, such as YouTubers, influencers (people who, thanks to a large number of followers on the YouTube channel or social networks such as Instagram and Facebook, earn from subscribing to their channel or have contracts with some companies to advertise their brands and have monthly income from that), then with online betting, as well as with persons who have rented their own real estate for up to 30 days, the so-called flat per day.
The Tax Administration did not answer the questions of Politika about the number of so-called freelancers who work for foreign employers and do not pay taxes, as well as the loss due to that. Goran Radosavljevic, a professor at the FEFA faculty, explains that in our country, income tax is paid after deduction. This means that the employer has an obligation to deduct taxes and contributions from the gross salary and pay them to the state. If someone works for an employer that does not have a registered office in Serbia, that person has the obligation to pay taxes and contributions for himself within 30 days of receiving the salary. If a YouTuber or someone who deals with internet sales picks up a site in the Cayman Islands and receives money through that YouTube channel, and the Tax Administration determines that it has cash inflows from abroad, it is subject to withholding tax. The most common tax burden that follows it is about 46 percent – 20 percent of taxes and 26 percent of contributions, but for some type of contract the base is smaller, so the amount of tax is smaller.
– With the development of electronic business, the number of jobs that can be done from Serbia abroad is expanding. We don’t know how much there is, but the tax authorities saw that something was happening. The tax administration can access this information through banks and will probably do so at some point. This announcement seems like a warning: pay attention, we will go into control, so that we don’t tell you – says Radosavljevic, who suspects that anyone pays that tax.
Our interlocutor says that it can be controlled because the money goes through official banking channels. When someone is credited with 3,000 euros every month, the bank must at one point ask what it is. After all, it can be seen on what basis the money was paid and, if it is classified as a salary, the bank is obliged to report it to the Tax Administration. He explains that, on the other hand, the Tax Administration can ask banks to examine everyone who has monthly payments from abroad. The only question is how massive it should be for the Tax Administration to start dealing with it.
– We do not know what the intention of the Tax Administration is. All freelancers are absolute taxpayers and they have to pay taxes. The task of the authorities is to find them and collect taxes – says Radosavljevic.
If the taxpayer does not report his income, and it is about income up to 3-4 thousand euros and the taxpayers discover that in the control, the taxpayer will be followed by a misdemeanor report, ie a criminal report if the amount in question is higher than mentioned. Since December 2019, freelancers in Serbia have been given the opportunity to define themselves in accordance with the way they do business by paying taxes and contributions.
It is not known how much the state is at a loss because they do not, as there is no precise data on the amount of salaries and the number of people who hold English language classes in Chinese private schools through online platforms, how many engineers create software for American companies or how many graphic designers provides services to foreign companies, Politika reports.
