The Tax Administration has started the forced collection of due tax obligations of workers on the Internet, the Association of Workers on the Internet (URI) announced on its Twitter account and submitted a tax warning as proof.
On December 29, 2020, the Tax Administration sent the first warning for the payment of the due tax liability with calculated interest within 5 days, or it will initiate the procedure of forced collection, it is stated in the announcements.
“It was not enough for them that a couple of days before the New Year, almost 2,000 people sent tax invitations, starting this year they are going to seize everything that comes to hand!”, The Association estimates.
It is reminded that at the protest of workers on the Internet held on December 30, the competent authorities were given a period of 15 days to officially start negotiations and “stop the tax administration’s chase on workers on the Internet”.
“In case our demands are not met, there will be tens of thousands of us on the street! Let’s go out together and show solidarity with all colleagues who have already felt what persecution by the Tax Administration means. No one is sure! Until they prove to us that they stopped sending calls and solutions, and now a warning, we will not give up!”, announces the Association.
We remind you that the Tax Administration of Serbia has sent solutions by which it wants to retroactively, for the last five years, collect taxes on workers on the Internet based on income from abroad.
Freelancers agree that they should pay taxes, but on several occasions so far they have asked for changes in the law that would solve the employment status of digital workers and regulate the way of taxing their work. They also demanded that the retroactive collection of taxes be postponed for the past five years, when they did not enjoy any legal protection.
According to the current system, natural persons who earn income by working for foreign legal entities or natural persons who do not have a representative office or branch in Serbia are obliged to calculate and pay taxes themselves.
The calculation depends on several factors, but the approximate total cost is about 45 percent of the realized revenues.
The problem is that people who have temporary jobs on the Internet, believe that this amount is too large without exercising any rights under the labor law. In case they are unemployed, they do not have health insurance and they have to pay for it.
Also, a special registration number is required in the APR where every freelancer will have a personal identification number and pay that tax as a company, but only if he has some income without monthly additional fees.
As previously reported by Startit, the Tax sample shows that so far every 100th freelancer has reported income from abroad.
According to research by the Center for Public Policy, a community of people who do different jobs through the so-called platform gig workers, not to be underestimated at all.
Tens of thousands of gig workers from Serbia and the region work through general online global platforms such as Upwork, Freelancer, Guru and Fiverr, as well as specialized platforms, such as Engoo, ABC Tutor.
The leading role of Serbia in the platform economy, measured by the number of gig workers per capita and by the share in the labor force, was pointed out for the first time by the World Bank study from 2015, Nova Ekonomija reports.
