Paying taxes is one of the main requirements of the state for its citizens. In many countries, tax evasion is considered a very serious crime, the tax authorities carefully monitor all income of citizens. For some time now, the Russian authorities have begun to show interest in Internet income generated by advertising.
The rapid development of the Internet has attracted very large funds to it, the annual turnover is estimated at billions of dollars. One of the main sources of income on the Internet is the placement of advertisements, while the issues of taxation of the income received from it are still far from fully settled.
Advertising is considered to be information posted on the site and describing a particular product or service. If the site hosts third-party advertisements, the tax is paid by the site owner. In the event that the owner of the site places his advertisement and, therefore, does not receive payment for it from the outside, no tax is paid from it, since there is simply no object of taxation.
Recently, the State Duma of the Russian Federation has become interested in the income of bloggers who profit from advertising. Russian legislation does not yet have an article obliging bloggers to pay advertising tax. It is assumed that such a law will be adopted at the autumn session. We are not talking about specific amounts of tax, and it is also completely unclear on what principles its amount will be calculated. Of particular difficulty is the fact that in many cases, advertising revenue directly depends on the number of site visitors. At the same time, it is completely unclear who and how will count the number of visitors. It is worth noting the fact that the advertiser often pays the site owner not for the placement of the advertisement itself, but for the clicks of users on the links presented in the advertisement. This means that it is necessary to count the number of such transitions, which further complicates the tax collection system.
Obviously, tracking ads on tens of thousands of sites will require an army of controllers, whose work must also be paid for by someone. It is unlikely that State Duma deputies will dare to shift this burden onto site owners or providers. Therefore, it is likely that lawmakers will choose the simpler option, which will charge a fixed amount for ad placement. Foreign experience can be taken as a basis - for example, in Philadelphia, the same bloggers pay a one-time deduction to the state treasury in the amount of $ 300 or an annual deduction of $ 50.
