Kazakhstan's bloggers have received mass tax notifications regarding debts totaling billions of tenge, as reported by Tengri Life.
According to the Committee of State Revenue, 594 individuals understated their incomes by a total of 53.3 billion tenge. Bloggers themselves claim that many more influencers have been accused of "understating incomes."
What Happened
The Committee of State Revenue explained that during audits, data from various sources was compared with submitted tax declarations, which revealed the violations.
"When conducting control measures, state revenue authorities interact with authorized state bodies, organizations, and other entities. As a result of comparing data obtained from various information sources with the information in the submitted tax declarations, discrepancies were found for 594 individuals amounting to 53.3 billion tenge. Consequently, from February 13 to 14 of this year, notifications of documentary control regarding the violation of 'understating incomes' were sent," the agency noted.
Now, bloggers must either submit corrected tax returns and pay taxes or provide explanations within 30 working days.
"To comply with the notification, it is necessary to submit additional tax reports along with the payment of self-assessed taxes or, in case of disagreement, to provide an explanation. The deadline for compliance with the notification is 30 working days," emphasized the Committee of State Revenue.
The agency pointed out that all income from online advertising, promotion of goods and services, sale of courses, holding lotteries, and other types of commercial activities are subject to taxation.
"We also emphasize the necessity of paying taxes on income received, including from placing online ads on various internet resources (promotion or sale of informational products, sale of various training courses, holding lotteries, and more). These obligations are established by the Constitution and the Tax Code of Kazakhstan," the agency's statement said.
What Amounts Are Involved
Kazakhstan blogger Alisher Yelikbayev stated in his post that practically all influencers received tax notifications.
"All bloggers started receiving letters of happiness from the tax office. You can begin to gloat," he remarked.
According to him, the amounts of additional taxes for some colleagues exceed 300 million tenge. This implies that their estimated turnovers should be around 1 billion tenge. However, Yelikbayev finds such calculations unlikely.
"It’s unclear how they came up with such amounts. Now they are going around proving that they are not camels and do not earn that much and never have," the blogger emphasized.
Yelikbayev himself is also on the list – he has been charged with non-payment of about 5 million tenge. He suspects that this amount may have arisen from charitable collections.
"Twice we collected money on my card for a donor kidney and once for a resuscitation vehicle for a children's hospice. We will sort it out," shared Alisher.
Yelikbayev fears that such methods of tax administration will push the market backward.
"There are many questions about the calculation methods, and now all these 8,000 people are obliged to rush to the tax office and prove they are not camels. They are asked to report on every amount, where it came from, for what purpose, and where the money went. The government is once again shooting itself in the foot for one simple reason. People who have just started to legalize will suddenly start going underground because, for the tax office, it seems that how much you pay is not important, but how they calculate it is. And they calculate very poorly, and that is already evident," he stressed.
These concerns are shared by blogger Rinat Balgaev, who has officially paid taxes and marked advertisements since 2015. However, he also received a notification of debt.
"The amount is small, but completely unfounded. We will sort it out," he noted.
Kirill Pavlov also shared his experience.
"I was simply charged a transport tax for last year. For a car that I have already sold and for which all taxes have been paid. When we started to investigate, they said it was a technical glitch," shared the Kazakhstani.
By the way, at the end of 2023, it became known that Kazakhstan plans to require bloggers to pay taxes on income earned from advertising on social media. Now, influencers are required to mark advertisements on social media and may be held accountable for spreading "fake news" and tax evasion.
How many bloggers are there in Kazakhstan and how they pay taxes - read here.
Later, the Ministry of Culture and Information approved the rules for marking online advertising for bloggers.
