Under UK tax rules, breast augmentation surgery may be considered a business expense in certain limited circumstances.
When the body is a work tool, certain expenses can be the subject of debate. An OnlyFans user has successfully convinced the UK government to make breast augmentation a legitimate business expense and receive tax benefits. It became the first known case of this practice coming from the platform, reports The Independent.
Onlyfans is a platform for sharing photos and videos, especially erotic or pornographic content. To access it, you have to pay the content creators directly, who set the price of their subscription. Across the Channel, OnlyFans has around 100,000 “influencers” and the average cost of a breast augmentation operation is between 4,000 and 9,000 euros, according to the NHS, the country’s public health system.
The UK Revenue and Customs Authority (HMRC) allows self-employed “artists or entertainers” to claim reimbursement for cosmetic surgery operations, provided they prove they are professional.
Review the legislation
Such a tax benefit was first claimed in 2003 for teeth straightening by a TV presenter. These rules then made it possible to claim reimbursement for facelifts, breast implants, injections or dental whitening.
Rachel Harris, an accountant whose many clients work on OnlyFans, interviewed by the Daily Mail, believes that this system of tax benefits is “obsolete”. “These rules were established at a time when people weren’t creating the kind of content they create today,” she explains.
For its part, HMRC reacted by insisting that it “is very unlikely that a non-health related operation will be an eligible expense”. And the affair becomes political when the English MP Alexander Stafford gets involved: “I am sure that most taxpayers will not be happy to learn that tax allowances are used in this way. That is why I think that ‘it is completely justified to re-examine these rules related to aesthetic procedures,’ he reacted to the English newspaper.
