“Income earned from platform work must be included in one’s income tax return. Income tax must be paid both on income generated by person’s activities (e.g. income earned by food couriers and drivers), as well as on income from renting out one’s property," said Annika Oja, owner of ETCB’s natural person’s services.
As platform work is a growing trend, the taxation of income earned from it is under the increased attention of the ETCB.
“From this year, platform operators are obliged to provide the ETCB with information about sellers and service providers operating on the platforms and the income earned by them, which will allow the ETCB to check the data declared more efficiently next year. However, the ETCB can check the income tax returns of last three years,” she added.
If a platform operator itself has paid taxes on the employee and forwarded the data to the ETCB, this data will be included in the first table of the tax return together with the income from wages and salary. If the table is not pre-filled, this means that the platform has not withheld income tax on the paid wages and persons have to add the income received to the tax return themselves. The tax return is easy to fill — in the second part of table 5.1, payer’s details and the amount of income received must be entered.
Income from the provision of accommodation services through platforms on which the payer has not withheld income tax must also be declared. Income from the provision of accommodation services must be declared in table 5.6 and if the platform operator has submitted the data to the ETCB, this table is pre-filled. It is necessary to make sure that the data is correct and, if necessary, complete the data and pay income tax on the declared income.
If income earned through a platform has been received into an entrepreneur account (the service of LHV Pank), the data in the income tax return is pre-filled in table 7.2 and all taxes have already been paid on that income. Platform workers who opened the entrepreneur account in the middle of the year should definitely check their pre-filled data. This means that the income earned during the period preceding the use of the entrepreneur account must be added to table 5.1.
In 2022, the number entrepreneur account users increased significantly — from 4036 active entrepreneur account users in 2021 to 8474 in 2022. The amount of transactions has also increased from EUR 9.3 million in 2021 to EUR 18.3 million in 2022. The increase occurred mainly in the second half of the year, after the ETCB took measures to raise awareness about tax obligations among platform workers.
