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| February 22, 2022

SAC has confirmed strict requirements for proving Internet advertising

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The Supreme Administrative Court (SAC) continues the trend of high requirements for proving advertising, which is confirmed by the current ruling for advertising on the Internet. 

In the judgment in question, the court considered it necessary for the taxpayer to prove having received advertising not only by means of invoices, statements containing the number of times the advertisement was displayed or other similar documents, but also by means of screenshots capable of capturing the advertisement directly. In the court’s view, statements alone, e.g. on how many times and ad was displayed, are not sufficient evidence, because they are only data records that can easily be created additionally, even if the advertising was not actually carried out. Screenshots are therefore useful as evidence and should contain sufficient records of the date, on which they were taken. After all, if advertising is provided exclusively online, there is, in the words of the SAC, no other way to capture it. 

Furthermore, the court stated that it is possible to prove the use of advertising also through an administrator account, e.g. in the Google AdWords system, through which the advertising was arranged. It is therefore important to have not only the relevant tax documents, but also sufficient documentation of the realisation of the advertisement and time-identifiable records for a possible tax audit.