Kees de Boekhouder meets the Belastingdienst to talk about “Influencers”
It’s a group of fresh, new entrepreneurs that have made their lifestyle their product: influencers: the cool cats of social media.
As an influencer your business and private life gets mixed up a lot, because you are the product of your business yourself. This is a difficult case for the Belastingdienst, because it has to be determined whether or not the costs you declare are strictly business. So how can you explain that your ‘I really (but really!) woke up this morning looking like this’-look was created thanks to your lingerie by Maison Nouvelle and your YSL make-up.
Wanting to share our experience with influencers, but also gamers and Youtubers, we called a meeting with the Belastingdienst to give them insight in how these influencers create revenue, work hard for it and when costs might look like private costs but really are business costs.
The friendly folks at the Belastingdienst were benevolent and we spoke about the following case: if you really only use your Chanel bag for Instagram and you don’t use it for your daily stroll through the park, then we can declare it as an investment while playing by the fiscal rules.
Our goal was to give them a better understanding about this group, that doesn’t quite seem to fit a law that was created before the internet era. It would be great if our feedback will be taken into account as input for a clearer legislation.
Translation by: Renée ter Berg
