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Ukraine’s OnlyFans content creators declare more than $7 million in income
Ukraine’s tax service is looking to collect taxes on Ukrainians’ income made on the the subscription-based site OnlyFans, widely known for being an adult content platform, despite pornography being illegal in the country.
After the country’s tax service sent out requests to Ukrainian citizens who earn money on the platform, 451 people sent in declarations totaling Hr 326.1 million ($7.76 million) for the period of 2020-2022, Ekonomichna Pravda reported on Jan. 22, citing information requested from the country’s tax service.
Ukraine’s tax authorities said it had requested data from the U.K.’s tax service on Ukrainian earnings on OnlyFans for the period from 2020-2022, Ekonomichna Pravda reported. OnlyFans is owned by the British company Fenix International Limited.
Ukraine’s tax service refused to disclose how many Ukrainian citizens were earning money on OnlyFans, but said it had sent out 4,429 requests to Ukrainians to declare their income from the site.
Only 451 people, or 10% of those contacted, filed declarations. These filings revealed a total tax liability of Hr 63.2 million ($1.5 million) in personal income and military taxes. It is unclear what type of content those who responded to the request for declaration are creating on OnlyFans.
Although OnlyFans is known for adult content, it hosts a variety of materials, including fitness tutorials, cooking lessons, and behind-the-scenes content from artists.
Ukraine’s tax service also told Ekonomichna Pravda that it had received a court order to pass along information on Ukrainians earning money on the site to a law enforcement agency, without specifying which one.
The media outlet reported a day earlier that Ukraine’s Bureau of Economic Security was provided the names of Ukrainians earning income on the platform, and had begun carrying out searches of models and bringing charges against them under Article 301 of the criminal code that deals with the production of pornography.
Kyiv has looked to increasing tax revenues as a means to bolster its wartime budget amid Russia’s ongoing war.
But as pornography and adult content, which makes up a lot of the activity on OnlyFans, remains illegal in Ukraine, its users have largely avoided declaring income from the site out of fear of legal repercussions.
Ukraine’s strict anti-pornography laws have created complications for creators. The legal framework prohibits the production and distribution of pornography, with broad interpretations leading to prosecutions even for consensual sharing of intimate images.
“OnlyFans already pays taxes in Ukraine. But for ‘Ukrainian actors,’ even if they want to pay taxes, it is impossible. It would be an admission of guilt,” Opposition lawmaker Yaroslav Zhelezniak said late last year.
OnlyFans as a company pays taxes in Ukraine through the country’s taxes on electronic services.
Efforts to change the laws surrounding pornography are underway. A bill to decriminalize pornography was registered in late 2024 for the second time in recent years and gained support from the Verkhovna Rada’s specialized law enforcement committee in December.
Zhelezniak, who has supported amending the laws around pornography in Ukraine, said late last year that there are more than 5,000 people in the country currently making money through OnlyFans.
One of those OnlyFans members who lives in Ukraine is:
She does sell porn on the site and she also has a cooking show, sort of:
I made contact with her about three months ago and she seemed different from most of the shallow women on the site, so we became friends. We even switched to chat on Telegram instead of OnlyFans later.
She told me repeatedly that she wanted to get out of Ukraine to escape the war and go to America to start a new life with a man she would love and have a family with. So I believed her and used Paypal to send her money, but I made it clear to her I saw these donations as LOANS she would have to pay me back later. And she promised me she would do so.
But she later BROKE that promise and when she said she was about to leave Ukraine for Poland, she suddenly demanded MORE money from me…..like the 2600 dollars I had sent her was simply not enough?! I was furious at her now obvious treachery!
So I blocked her. Then she switched to another Telegram account to attack me for not sending her money, even though I was already in debt because of her! I blocked that too. Then I reported what she did to the OnlyFans admin. If she is scamming people like me via PayPal, she doesn’t need OnlyFans, right? She should be BANNED from that site!
It seems my sense of skepticism has failed to protect me again. ANOTHER painful lesson learned!
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