Influencer marketing, the most common tax risks
In the creator economy there is no automatism in applying the type of employment relationship
Failure to comply. These are the most frequent irregularities on the part of influencers and creators in the tax field. Thus partial or omitted declarations rather than actions aimed at committing outright fraud. This was one of the topics at the centre of the conference held yesterday at the Milan Law Courts, entitled 'Influencer and creator economy: tax profiles, control models and criminal-tax risks', organised by the Tax Criminal Law Centre, the Milan Bar Association, the Milan Chamber of Tax Lawyers and Uncat.
Given the difficulty of legislation to keep up with the evolution of business and digitalisation, the monitoring of the phenomenon by institutions and control bodies remains essential - of great impact, it should be noted, is the introduction, at the beginning of 2025, of the Ateco code for influencers and content creators.
Luigi Vinciguerra, division general of the Guardia di Finanza, is aware of this, who, precisely because of the difficulty in defining who is an influencer or a creator and how they work, considers these figures to be 'complex contributors'. In order to correctly analyse the professional classification and the contribution profile of creators, it is indeed necessary to take a picture of the whole chain of this industry, which is composed of creators, brands, agencies, platforms, users. While from the point of view of remuneration, thesources of income may come from sponsorship fees, commissions, adv sharing, image licences, direct sales of products or services, subscriptions.
Work relations
"There is no automatism in applying a type of employment relationship to the influencer or creator," explained Vinciguerra. "Numerous factors must be considered, such as the content of the obligation, the degree of autonomy, and the intensity and stability of the activity. If the most widespread case can be configured in the self-employed person with VAT registration number registered with the separate management, there can also be the possibility of coordinated and continuous collaboration, if there is, for example, an almost dominant client, or of subordinate work, if there is a brand that provides everything and pervasively controls the creative process. Finally, there is also the case of business income if there is an organised structure and different activities are integrated'.
At present, there is no specific category within self-employment income that identifies creators' remuneration. "With regard to direct taxes and VAT, the distinction is habituality, which should not be understood as exclusivity," recalled the Gdf general.
