In Morocco, influencers are in the sights of the tax authorities. “Tax inspectors are currently tracking tax fraud professionals on social networks,” reports the daily Assaba. According to sources, “this tracking aims to verify the proportionality between the income declared by individuals and their cash assets”. It has in fact been noted that some of the taxable persons declare income which does not exceed 8,000 dirhams per month, even though they own real estate whose value is estimated at tens of millions of dirhams.
To assess their standard of living, the tax administration accesses the pages of certain taxable persons on social networks. These pages represent a starting point for tax auditors because they see posts on details of the influencers’ lives. Sites subject to the declaration regime, those which have various sources of income and choose not to declare them, are also in the sights of the tax authorities. The harvest is proving fruitful: the DGI has already been able to identify people whose stated standard of living is well above their declared income and sent them a notification inviting them to regularize their tax situation. Failing this, they will be subject to a tax adjustment.
Read: Moroccan influencers involved in illegal real estate purchases abroad
In addition to influencers, the liberal professions are also targeted by this control operation. Observation made: a certain number of them declare income significantly lower than the turnover usually generated by their activity. The tax administration has sources of information to deepen the research and identify some of the properties of the groups targeted on social networks.
To carry out this fight against tax fraud, the DGI has concluded agreements with other services, such as the National Land Conservation Agency, which allow it to have an idea of the assets of people suspected of tax fraud. It is also based on article 216 of the General Tax Code. This authorizes the administration to assess the total annual income of an individual, taking into account their cash assets deposited in their bank accounts, or in the accounts of any person to whom they are linked. Without forgetting his expenses.
Morocco
