Hetmantsev spoke out in favor of abolishing punishment for producers of pornographic content

The government has no right to tax and prosecute adult content creators at the same time, so it should be decriminalized. About this stated Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Finance, Tax and Customs Policy, Danylo Hetmantsev.

“You can’t be half honest with yourself. Everything else is hypocrisy. I’m in favor of decriminalization. The state can’t use one hand to take money from content creators with taxes, and with the other to launch a campaign to harass those same payers. I’ll say nothing about “control purchases” at all.” – explained Hetmantsev, by sharing a link to the petition posted on the president’s website.

In the mentioned petition, one of the OnlyFans models reports that despite the fact that she has paid more than UAH 40 million in taxes in recent years, the law enforcement authorities initiated a case against her under Article 301 of the Criminal Code (importation, manufacture, sale and distribution of pornographic objects), and allegedly offered to stop the harassment in exchange for a “certain amount”.

She calls on the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyi, to support draft law No. 12191, which provides for the decriminalization of importing, storing, manufacturing, forwarding, selling and distributing pornographic products (including videos, images, programs, etc.) to adults.

We will remind, at the beginning of September last year, Hetmantsev reported that the State Tax Service received information about the income of Ukrainian users of the OnlyFans platform. Although he did not disclose the total amount at the time, he emphasized that all income must be declared, and fines are provided for violations. According to tax officials, in 2022, about 5,000 Ukrainians earned $80 million on the platform.

Immediately after that, a group of 22 detectives of the Bureau of Economic Security (BEB) obtained through the court access to the personal data of Ukrainian models, which the owners of OnlyFans provided at the request of the DPS. In the future, BEB employees conducted searches of representatives of this field. In addition, the National Police regularly conducts “control purchases” of content on the platform within the same Article 301 of the Criminal Code.