Remember when you were a kid & you dreamed of being like the influencers you saw on YouTube & Instagram? Adored by millions of fans, showered with money & gifts, & not having to pay a single dime in taxes for any of it? Or, so many popular influencers seem to think.
The income-tax department has sent notices to 15 influencers (with another 30 being closely monitored) for claiming zero income or “substantially low” taxes for the year. But, as it turns out, the income-tax department isn’t as stupid as these people thought they were. Many of these self-important celebrities showed off their lavish exotic vacations & bragged about how much they got paid promoting certain products. It didn’t take the brainiac tax assessors long to do the simple math that shows they were obviously lying.
Without naming any names, the list of influencers includes a lifestyle & fitness coach, a high-profile fashion mogul, travel influencers, & one famous for their Bollywood posts. As most influencers are not exactly known for their brain power, they don’t seem to realize that some people are able to think critically.
For example, one Mumbai-based influencer famously makes between ₹50,000 & ₹1 lakh for a single post on Instagram. The luxury makeup brands they endorse paid them over ₹30 lakh, not to mention showering them with luxury gifts, yet they only claimed an annual income of ₹3.5 lakh.
There is an unbelievable amount of money being made by these influencers every year. The 2022 Influencer Marketing Report shows the social media influencer market bringing in about ₹900 crore, in 2021. This is expected to increase to ₹2,200 crore by 2025. Micro-influencers (those with 10,000 to 50,000 followers) usually make between ₹5,000 to ₹30,000 for a post about their sponsored content. Followers up to 500,000 can charge ₹15-40,000 per post. Celebrities & mega-bloggers, with over half a million followers can receive a staggering ₹50,000 to ₹1.5 lakh for certain posts.
Under tax law, those earning more than ₹20 lakh a year have to register their services as Online Information & Database Access or Retrieval Services (OIDAR). These are taxed at 18%. Under Section 194R of the Income Tax Act, a 10% tax must be deducted at source (TDS) for free merchandise & perks. This is what helped the tax department track down the income of these tax violaters.
Maybe these illegal influencers can continue their rich & famous lifestyles with a reality show that follows them when they go to prison for tax fraud. I can’t wait to catch them on next week’s episode of Keeping up With the Kriminals.
