Do you ever sell anything via Marktplaats.nl (or a similar website)? Chances are that you are not concerned about the tax consequences (if any). And of course, with occasional sales via Marktplaats.nl, you are not immediately liable for income tax and/or VAT. But if your (trading) activities become more structural, tax liability will certainly come into play. Of course, this is no different from when you structurally start economic activities via other means than the internet. But if you seek publicity on a website, it does become somewhat easy for the tax authorities to track you down. And count on the Inland Revenue scouring the internet in search of structural economic activities whose tax obligations have been neglected, intentionally or otherwise.
Incidentally, it is not yet easy for tax authorities to keep up with the lightning-fast developments in our economy. It is far from always clear what tax consequences an activity should lead to. And if those consequences are clear, the tax involved (the tax interest) often does not justify the deployment of resources to actually obtain them. See here: one of the challenges for politicians to design the most future-proof tax system possible. But whatever is “invented”, practice will always be ahead of it.
For example, how should the sharing of a passenger car by a private individual be qualified for tax purposes? A passenger car, used for the personal purposes of a private person, is not subject to income tax. As soon as the car, on days when the owner does not drive it himself, is shared for a fee (leased), the value of the car must be included in the basis of income from savings and investments (box 3). This is because the car is then no longer used exclusively for the personal purposes of the owner (or members of his household). If the work involved in car sharing is more substantial, the income could even be taxed as income from an activity (result from other activities; box 1). Sharing is also often done through a website set up for this purpose, which allows the tax authorities to put a finger on it. Something that, incidentally, is also not that simple, as the (legal) persons behind such a website are often abroad, so obtaining information is far from a given.
Also popular is exchanging achievements. As the well-known saying goes, “from exchanging comes crying”. And that can relate to taxation. Indeed, the circumstance that a performance is paid for not in cash (but in kind) does not take away the need to apply the regular tax rules. However, much bartering is difficult for the tax authorities to trace.