Adult content is illegal in the country so OnlyFans models keep their incomes secret, Daniil Getmantsev has claimed
Kiev is missing out on millions of dollars per year in tax revenues from adult streaming site OnlyFans due to the country’s ban on pornography, a senior Ukrainian lawmaker has argued.
It comes as Kiev is facing a massive budget deficit that its Western sponsors are struggling to cover amid Ukraine’s crumbling war effort.
The country’s porn ban is preventing it from cashing in on “about a billion hryvnas ($24 million) per year” in tax revenue from domestic OnlyFans models, Daniil Getmantsev, the head of the parliament’s Finance, Tax and Customs Policy Committee wrote on Telegram on Friday.
“Meanwhile, instead of significant potential revenues to the budget, we have over $9 million in unpaid tax from content creators for 2020-2022 alone,” he added.
In 2023, nearly 8,000 Ukrainian OnlyFans models made around $120 million via the adult entertainment site, Getmantsev said. Despite this, only 152 of them officially declared their income to tax authorities, he added, arguing that models fear criminal prosecution.
Ukraine’s current ban on pornography stems from a 2009 law signed by then-President Viktor Yushchenko, which made the production, distribution, and possession of pornography a criminal offense.
Despite petitions for its decriminalization, the production and distribution of adult content in Ukraine is currently punishable by up to five years in prison.
UK-based OnlyFans reported $7.2 billion in gross revenue for fiscal year 2024. Top earners on the site, mostly celebrities with a pre-existing audience, are estimated to earn millions of dollars monthly.
The website’s owner, Ukrainian-born Leonid Radvinsky, earned nearly half a billion dollars in dividends during the last financial year.
In 2024, Ukrainian authorities began a series of raids targeting OnlyFans models for alleged tax evasion.
A recent report by Ukraine’s KSE Institute estimates the country’s budget gap for 2025-2028 at $53 billion per year. The sum would have to be covered by Kiev’s foreign sponsors.
An EU initiative to use frozen Russian sovereign assets to back a €140 billion ($163 billion) so-called “reparation loan” to Kiev has so far failed due to opposition from Belgium, where most of the funds are held.
Moscow has condemned the initiative as “theft,” warning that it undermines trust in Western finance.
