How freelancers will pay taxes?
BELGRADE - Everyone who earns in foreign currencies, starting this year, has the opportunity to choose between two models for taxation, and applications and model selection will be submitted quarterly to the Tax Administration. Some of them will be obliged to pay back tax debts from 2017.
According to the first method of calculation, 96,000 dinars of so-called standardized costs are deducted from the freelancer's quarterly income, and tax is paid at the rate of 20 percent on the resulting difference. According to the second model, standardized costs of 57,900 dinars and 34 percent of the realized income of each specific freelancer are subtracted from the quarterly income. Tax is paid on the difference at the rate of 10 percent. The law also applies to foreigners who earn money by working on the Internet.
"This solution, in my opinion, is good for freelancers in the long term. This is the best thing they could achieve. They have an extremely favorable tax treatment compared to other taxpayers of personal income tax," says Ivan Antić, "Economic Advisor".
Freelancers consider the taxation model for this year to be a good basis for continuing to regulate their status. However, although the state has recognized them as a category of employees who have the obligation to pay income tax and contributions, it does not provide them with the same rights as other taxpayers..
"With this current solution, those rights are not at the level of employees. Let's say, you don't have the right to sick leave, you don't have the right to vacation, childcare leave.” “ I had to work the whole pregnancy, until the last day, full time” added Milena Vukajlović Association of Internet Workers.
When it comes to obligations from 2017, those freelancers, as well as workers on the ship to whom the Tax Administration sent tax decisions, will pay the obligations in 120 instalments over the next 10 years, without interest. In the office of the "Economic Advisor", they conclude that those who did not pay taxes in 2017 did better than those who did.
"We cannot say that this is a case of retroactive tax determination, because these persons were obliged in accordance with the applicable law at the time when they earned the income to self-tax."
Obligations from 2017: freelancers who earned up to 768,000 dinars in the calendar year do not pay taxes and contributions.
"What the Association negotiated was that freelancers who earned up to around 580 euros were somehow saved from that debt. But the others did not. And what is happening now is that the scope of those tax decisions is greater compared to the situation 2 years ago, but that those sums are divided into 120 instalments and then they seem more acceptable."
Freelancers will pay for pension and disability, as well as health insurance, themselves, and the monthly expenditure for the independent payment of contributions for pension and disability insurance starts from 8,406 dinars.
Source: rtv.rs