Taxing OnlyFans Creators to Pay for Drones?

As it turns out, war can be mighty expensive, and Ukraine is getting creative in the war against Russia. Since 2012, when Russia occupied and annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula, the country has been fighting off its much larger neighbor and they’re running out of munitions. Most notably, Ukraine’s low on crucial attack drones, providing the country with a way to strike without putting human fighter crews in danger. Outside of the war, Ukraine is taking an opposing stance against Russia when it comes to OnlyFans and the realm of adult content creators.

Russia has been enforcing its anti-pornography laws in big ways lately. Targeting OnlyFans creators for massive fines and lengthy sentences in prison or under house arrest. The pro-Putin regime has said it is going after OnlyFans models to help protect the country’s “traditional values”. (In the United States, one party’s “traditional values” could be a backdoor to an outright porn ban, but that’s a different story for another time.)

Conversely, Ukraine is taking a different approach. Rather than fine and arrest creators into oblivion, they’re thinking of a way to fund the war through taxing what has proven to be an incredibly profitable industry.

Now, before we get over our skis, pornography production is still illegal in Ukraine. In fact, the country has seen multiple scandals involving corrupt police officers taking bribes and threatening suspects they accuse of making pornography. 

This isn’t cheap for Ukraine, and factoring in the war just makes their bill even more eye-popping. The country already employs “investigation groups” - a kind of pornography eradication task force - not to mention all the cash the country spends to prosecute porn cases. 

Many OnlyFans creators still operate in Ukraine, and for them, it’s one of the only ways to make a living during the war. Ukraine doesn’t let pornography production go unpunished, but they’re ensconced in a war, so the “underground” adult industry is low on their list of problems to address.

Frustratingly for adult creators, Ukraine has already slowly begun taxing their OnlyFans income, leaving the creators in a gray area. They can either pay taxes on this illegal income and potentially face charges, or refuse to pay taxes and potentially be charged for that. It’s a lose-lose that advocates say the country needs to get rid of. 

Lesia Mykhalenko is a Ukrainian attorney representing OnlyFans creators in criminal cases. “This is a victimless crime,” Mykhalenko said. “It unnecessarily burdens the legal system at a time when we should be focused on defending the country.”

Just how much is the adult industry worth in Ukraine? The Wall Street Journal listed in a 2023 report that 7,900 Ukrainians made over $131 million in a year alone on OnlyFans.

And if Ukraine taxed this industry? They could make as much as $25 million. For reference, the drones the country wants to buy with this money cost between $500 and $55,000. That's a lot of drones.

Side note: Ukraine has developed defense drones that automatically hunt down and destroy Russia’s much more expensive Shahed drones they purchased from Iran, with only little drone operator input required. Prohibiting these harmful drones from striking their cities while maintaining a cost advantage over the enemy has been of critical importance.

Now, Ukraine still has to legalize pornography. In July, Ukrainian lawmakers passed a bill decriminalizing production of adult content, but it still has a long way to go in parliament. What’s more, the country still has rampant corruption within its police ranks to address. 

But $25 million in tax profits is nothing to sneeze at, and in a conflict where everything is on the line, it could be the difference between Ukraine staying the course or losing the fight.