La Dian calls influencers to order to pay taxes and clarify their finances

The Attorney General's Office has two cases of Colombian influencers under suspicion for the alleged use of their activity for money laundering. With this, the Directorate of Customs and National Taxes (DIAN) opened an audit chapter and began to review the income history of the top 50 most influential names on social networks.

It was found by surprise that only four of them had their tax accounts completely in order. At work, some make entertainment videos or become famous for their opinions and controversial stories, which also includes product advertising and even foreign trade, thereby attracting followers for which they are paid large sums.

However, there are others like Julio Profe who uses networks to teach mathematics. Others have dedicated themselves to importing and then selling goods, taking advantage of the captive audience they have on the networks. When they already become relevant in the digital industry, they receive money - and a lot - from various sources.

One of the best-known Colombian influencers is Yeferson Cossio, who in one of his videos revealed that his average monthly income is $750,000, but sometimes he manages to earn more than a million dollars in a month.

Right now, many of the influencers are being called by DIAN, in a pedagogical exercise to tell them what is or is not well done in tax matters.

After having enough indications that this is not just a tax evasion for DIAN, the Money Laundering Investigation Unit (UIAF) is next. This financial intelligence unit crosses the databases it has access to to find the truth. There, influencers have been under review since 2014, however, it is in recent times that this marketing and advertising activity has become even more widespread.

Money laundering increased with the rise of influencers in the pandemic, to such an extent that, on a network such as Instagram, in Colombia there are around 407,810. In 2019, marketing firm Izea investigated how brands pay for sponsored content on the internet and established that, on Instagram, the price of a promoted photo went from $134 in 2014 to $1,642 in just five years.

Networks such as YouTube, TikTok or Facebook, pay for content. For this reason, there is no absolute clarity about the amount of money that moves in our country with this activity.

The profile that the UIAF has made of influencers puts them in a rank - at 86 per cent - between 18 and 33 years old, with an average age of 28 years. Most come from socio-economic levels with lower income, with difficulty accessing the labour market due to limited vocational training.

When they enter the digital world as a business, their income suddenly rises, without the proper preparation to know what to do with the money. The purchase of objects, luxurious services and the eccentricities of which they ufanan are the first choice.

A recent case is the case of Jenny Ambuila, who appeared on social networks showing cars worth 1 billion pesos and clothes from expensive fashion houses, to which the authorities failed to justify the source of so much income.

The UIAF has succeeded in establishing how influencers manage business strategies with imports. Operations become suspicious when they bring products from distant lands, despite being available in more accessible places.

The entity called the celebrities to invite them to legality, many of them, not knowing the tax rules thoroughly, sinned because of financial, accounting and administrative disorder. “We advised many of them, we told them that they should declare for their two types of income, the one they receive from their positioning in networks and the one that comes from advertising. They needed to organize their financial statements and look for an accountant,” Junco added.

On the other hand, DIAN detected that there were influencers who had been doing things very well. With the opening of the control of influencers, the tax institution has achieved a correction of 5 billion pesos between unpaid taxes, penalties and interest due to arrears. Junco mentions the issue of crypto assets, which are becoming part of the world of the most visible on networks, “it is something that sets the alarm even more, it is another phase of the control of influencers”.

Although virtual currency is not recognized in Colombia as a circulation value, therefore, it is not regulated, there are influencers who are receiving money for advertising payments on crypto assets. “This is not something illegal, but they think that they do not have to declare for that income,” Junco warns and recalls that the valuation of digital financial assets is in the Tax Statute.

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