The State Tax Service has fined the adult website PornHub $5.54 thousand for non-payment of the so-called “Google tax,” according to Danylo Hetmantsev, chairman of the parliamentary committee on finance, tax and customs policy.
“Unfortunately, not all taxpayers operating adult services are equally responsible for taxation. For example, the well-known Onlyfans service has already paid $944.1 thousand to the state budget of Ukraine since the beginning of 2023. At the same time, the company that operates the PornHub website evades registration, which resulted in a fine of $5543 and a corresponding tax notice (tax decision notice) sent to the company and the Canada Revenue Agency,” Hetmantsev wrote on Telegram.
He reminded that Ukraine is ranked 14th among other countries according to PornHub’s rating of electronic services viewed by consumers of the site.
A week earlier, the head of the committee said that in the third quarter of 2023, 96 declarations for EUR26.6 million and $29.9 million, or UAH 2.092 billion, were filed as part of the “Google tax”, while in the second quarter of 2023, EUR25.7 million and $27.7 million, or UAH 2.054 billion, were declared for payment.
Hetmantsev clarified that the largest amounts to the budget of Ukraine are paid by Google, Apple, Sony, Ebay, Amazon, Meta platforms and Netflix.
As reported, in 2021, the Verkhovna Rada passed a law on the “Google tax”, which proposes to equalize the taxation rules for international technology companies with those of Ukraine. In particular, it stipulates that international companies operating in the information space of Ukraine and earning money from online advertising will pay taxes in Ukraine, including VAT.
