Vloggers being taxed 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.