Vloggers being taxed in Uzbekistan 

On social networks, Uzbek bloggers stated that they received a notification from the tax authorities that they will pay taxes on the income they received as a result of their activities on the YouTube network.

The author of “Sirojiddin Media” channel said that in 2021 he earned about $9 thousand from YouTube and now he has to pay about 11 million soums in taxes for this.

Blogger Abdusattor Abdurakhimov also announced that he received a notice regarding the payment of taxes on the income he received from YouTube as a result of his activities in 2021.

“I received a letter from the Tax Inspectorate: about paying taxes on the money received from YouTube (Google). Would foreign money be taxed? I have to pay in 10 days, although the letter arrived in 13 days,” he wrote on Twitter.

 The author of “Sirojiddin Media” channel said that about half of his income from YouTube goes to vlogging expenses, while Abdusattor Abdurakhimov said that this income is not even enough to support the team.

Kun.uz received comments from Shukhrat Ismoilov, head of the State Tax Committee, regarding several questions.

The tax committee official explained that if bloggers were registered as self-employed, they would be exempt from income tax. Bloggers who received notices from the tax authorities were not registered as self-employed citizens.

“We consider blogging as an activity in social networks. As of June 2020, it has been converted into a legal activity. Self-employed individuals are exempt from personal income tax by law.

Speaking on social networks, the blogger said that the tax authorities demanded that he pay 11 million soums in taxes. He earned around $9,000 in 2021, on the basis of which the tax authorities are demanding to pay income tax.

If a citizen had registered as a self-employed person, he would not have been charged personal income tax for 2021. We see that he is subject to income tax as a self-employed person. According to the legislation, an individual must pay income tax on his income, property income, material income and salary income.

Since he is not registered as a self-employed person and is not a tax agent, he must pay 12% income tax on his income.

How did the tax authorities calculate the blogger’s earnings from YouTube? According to Shokhrukh Ismoilov, the income tax is calculated on the basis of external information about the receipt of foreign currency funds to the citizen’s account in Uzbekistan.

At this point, we turned to Shokhruh Ismoilov with a few more questions.

- How do the tax authorities determine that the money received in currency in a citizen’s account is the income received from YouTube activities?

- Let’s understand one thing first: there is no rule that only bloggers pay income tax. The money received by the citizen’s account may not be from the YouTube channel, but from other sources. In general, there are various categories that earn money from overseas, not from YouTube - programmers, web designers, etc. Each citizen must submit a declaration of total annual income to the tax authorities, whether he has received an additional source of income, received income from sources that are not a tax agent. Therefore, on the basis of information available from external sources or the tax authorities themselves, a notification is sent to the citizen.

The category we are focusing on is that YouTube bloggers have an additional source of income, that is, they receive income from sources that are not tax agents. Therefore, based on the money received in the account, tax authorities are sending notices based on the Tax Code.

It will not be clear to us in advance from which source the citizen received income, and therefore, based on the information we have, we will send a notice to the citizen in the sense that "you are being charged income tax in this amount, if you have supporting documents, please provide them."

A citizen will have to justify to us the source of his income or other non-taxable circumstances. Income received from YouTube is written in the notification sent to the tax authority based on previous information or if it is attached to the purpose of the payment to the account that it is from the YouTube network.

In fact, for 2021, citizens had to submit a declaration to us on their additional income. If you have not submitted a declaration to us by April 1, we will send a notification based on the information we have”.

- Bloggers’ income from YouTube may include expenses, and the overall income may not cover the expenses. Is income tax payable in this case as well?

- The amount of income tax indicated in the notification is based on conclusions obtained on the basis of internal and external data of the tax authorities. If a citizen shows his expenses included in these funds or proves that this income is not subject to taxation, he may not pay this tax. The fact that the notice has been sent does not mean that he is obliged to pay the specified amount without any objection. Because we do not know the exact source of the money received in the citizen’s account in advance.

It will be accepted if the citizen sends supporting documents through the my.soliq.uz platform. The employee who sent the notification, whether online or in person, will be the executive, and if the supporting documents are submitted, the tax sent in the notification will not be paid.

- Tell me, how many bloggers have registered as self-employed so far? Is there any information about the number of bloggers who pay income tax without registration?

- There are citizens who submitted a declaration on their total income. For example, this year more than 500,000 of our citizens submitted declarations about their total annual income. But we don’t know how many of these 500,000 citizens are bloggers, there are no separate reports. But more than 2,700 citizen bloggers are registered as self-employed.

In the above cases, when the bloggers registered as self-employed in January 2021, they would pay social tax for 2021 in an amount not less than the minimum wage, and would be exempted from paying a large amount of income tax (for example, 11 million soums) and would have a seniority.

Bloggers who have received notices about paying income tax may be upset: “I didn’t know about self-employment, now I pay so much tax”, but ignorance does not absolve from responsibility. We’ve talked a lot about self-employment through social media. We also provided a lot of information about the benefits of registering, paying social tax once and having a one-year longevity.