Atlikėjų pajamų apmokestinimas ir jų socialinė apsauga

Abstract

The article finalises a cycle of publications on the performers’ status in the light of intellectual property and social security. While former articles were aimed at intellectual property matters, this one deals with the issue of tax and social security treatment. The first part of the article analyses performers’ income tax treatment in Lithuania. Depending on a performers’ form of activity they fall into one of three contractual categories. First, a performer can work under a labour contract; second, a performer can inform the tax authorities about one’s intention to engage in the individual activity; and, lastly, a performer can act as an independent worker, but without engaging in any individual activity. Despite the fact that the second category (the tax rate is the smallest and certain deductions are allowed) is most beneficial to performers, a large part of performers are unaware of the possibility. Therefore, providing information to performers is of prime importance. The second part of the article deals with performers’ social security status in Lithuania. Performers can be granted several different statuses depending on the type of their engagement ,i.e. performer’s employment under a labour contract; an independent performer, a performer who has obtained the status of an individually acting person. These statuses are different in terms of the social insurance payment rates and the volume of insurance. Special guaranties, such as provided to the performer who is granted the status of an artist, are also discussed. The problem that has been identified is that social insurance payments are not deducted from the license fees and the employers as well as the performers prefer to choose license contracts and ignore other forms of contracts. Therefore, the authors recommend change social security laws accordingly and deduct social insurance payments from license fees as well.