Monday, 1 September 2014

Journalistic collaboration in online blogs, with or without VAT?

 
In this article we are going to talk about the tax obligations of the bloggers, an increasingly widespread activity on the web due to the large number of companies making publications and blogs, to be released in the media and attract customers. The tax treatment of journalistic collaborations already been detailed in previous articles. They commented on the possibility of combining work with a freelance paid work without registering for Social Security as self-employed. This is possible depending on the income they give us this second activity and regularity with which it is performed.
Being a professional activity subject to withholding does not require the submission of quarterly payments in advance for income tax. But what about VAT ?. Generally, the journalistic contributions are exempt from tax, but you have to stop and analyze what the “Tax Man” means by “journalistic collaboration”.
We understand the term journalistic collaboration as producing a text for print media and newspaper. A work for an agency or an audiovisual medium is not considered a journalistic collaboration and therefore would not be exempt from VAT. Therefore, the work as editor on a blog is not a journalistic collaboration, which would require registering with the tax and filing quarterly VAT returns.
VAT exemptions are contained in Law 37/1992, of 28 December, the Value Added Tax, Article 20, which says: "They will be exempt from tax (...) Professional services, including those whose consideration consists of copyright, provided by artists, writers, literary collaborators, graphic and photographic newspapers and magazines, music composers, authors of plays and plot, adaptation, screenplay and dialogues of audiovisual works, translators and adapters ". We must emphasize the fact that the article mentions as exempt professional services for which consists in copyright.
The wording of the law would exclude online publications. The legislation is before the development of newspapers, magazines and blogs as we know them and there has been no change that has included these media within the scope of the exemption, therefore collaboration in these terms are themselves taxable.
It is important to remember that the criteria used to determine whether these jobs are exempt from VAT or subject is not the nature of who pays, but the conditions of collaboration. This means that if a person is already registered as a freelance journalist with the tax authorities and is exempt from VAT because their contributions are made in media within the scope of the exemption shall also submit the VAT form for the articles and writings published in online media since the Vat exemption cannot be applied..
if you collaborate publishing your writings in an online blog and want to know more about the tax implications do not hesitate to contact VP Advisers for further details.

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