OnlyFans model loses court case against the tax authorities: must pay 428,000 UAH

An OnlyFans model has lost her appeal in a tax dispute with the Main Directorate of the State Tax Service in the Chernivtsi region. The Seventh Administrative Court of Appeal upheld the decision of the court of first instance and effectively confirmed all tax assessments in the case.

This concerns personal income tax, military levy and penalties totalling 428,411.52 UAH.

According to the case file, the tax authorities believe that in 2021–2022, the woman received income from the British company Fenix International Ltd for creating content on the OnlyFans platform. The total amount of this income, according to the State Tax Service, was US$47,706.

In hryvnia terms, as stated in the court documents, this amounts to 1,731,200.61 UAH. Of this, 39,171.49 UAH was for 2021, and 1,692,029.12 UAH for 2022.

On the basis of this data, the tax authority assessed the claimant an additional 387,757.41 UAH in personal income tax. This amount comprised 311,616.11 UAH in principal tax liability and 76,141.31 UAH in penalties.

A separate amount of UAH 32,314.11 was charged as military levy. Of this amount, UAH 25,969.01 constituted the principal tax liability, and UAH 6,345.10 was a penalty.

In addition, the woman was charged a further 8,000 UAH in penalties and 340 UAH in fines.

In court, the claimant sought to have the tax assessment notices set aside. She argued that the tax authority did not have the necessary primary documents and had in fact relied solely on tax information.

In contrast, the State Tax Service insisted that it had used official information received from a competent authority in the United Kingdom as part of an international exchange of tax information. According to the tax authority, it was precisely this data that confirmed the receipt of income from Fenix International Ltd.

The Court of Appeal agreed with the findings of the court of first instance. The court concluded that the fact of receiving income from sources outside Ukraine had been proven, and that tax on it had been neither declared nor paid.

The court also upheld the tax authority’s use of information provided by the UK authorities regarding payments from Fenix International Ltd.

The judgment specifically noted that the claimant had not filed declarations of assets and income for 2021 and 2022. Furthermore, she had not provided evidence of tax payments on this income in the country of origin, which could have provided grounds for applying the double taxation avoidance mechanism.

Consequently, the appeal was dismissed, and the decision of the Chernivtsi District Administrative Court was upheld.

The OnlyFans platform is owned by the British company Fenix International Ltd, and the Ukrainian tax authorities receive information on the income of Ukrainian content creators through the international exchange of tax information.