VIAINVEST stands out in the P2P crowd with its unique loan portfolio – consumer loans listed on the platform are issued by the alternative financial services provider VIA SMS Group in four European countries and available for investments only on VIAINVEST. The interest rate for listed loans is set between 10% and 12%. If you have been around for a while or checking platform features for the first time, you may have also noticed that there is another feature that distinguishes VIAINVEST from other platforms – in order to be compliant with the legislation in both VIAINVEST home country and loan origin countries, VIAINVEST applies taxes to your income generated on the platform and helps you to manage your taxation procedure. This approach may seem unusual, as the majority of platforms choose to interpret existing legislation in such ways that would allow skipping this uncomfortable issue and leaving tax liabilities to investors. Yes, taxation on the platform may seem uncomfortable and frightening at first, but luckily Tax/Residence Certificate may exempt investors from paying the tax on the platform. Unfortunately, there are several special cases, where legislation obliges us to withhold the tax even if the investor has provided Tax/Residence Certificate. What does it mean for investors and is the taxed amount as big as it seems?
Until now Polish loans have been neglected as the annual interest rate for loans originated by VIASMS.pl was set to 10% and barely any investor could avoid paying the Withholding Tax on the platform as Polish legislation obliges VIAINVEST to tax investors at the reduced interest rate even if they provide Tax/Residence Certificates. As Withholding Tax amount varies per investor country, the majority of investors are taxed 5 to 10 percent of their income.
Including Polish loans in your auto-invest portfolio may solve the problem majority of P2P platforms with a Buyback Guarantee is experiencing – a lack of available loans that would satisfy high demands of investors. We can observe that, for example, Czech loans with a 12% annual interest rate or Spanish loans with 0% Withholding Tax rate (if the investor has provided valid Tax/Residence Certificate) are bought out in seconds. In order to encourage investors to consider investing in Polish loans, VIAINVEST has set new annual interest rate for this loan category – from now on loans originated by VIASMS.pl will be available with the 11% annual interest rate. Moreover, we would like to provide a practical example to illustrate what applied Withholding Tax looks like in numbers:
You are a German investor who has provided his Tax/Residence Certificate and invest in Polish loans taking into account that there will be Withholding Tax of 5% applied to your earned interest. You invest EUR 100 into Polish loan with an annual interest rate set to 11%. After 30 days, you will earn EUR 0,90. Withholding Tax of 5% is applied to the earned amount – EUR 0,90. So, 5% from EUR 0,90 is EUR 0,05. The total income from this investment after taxes will be EUR 0,85.
The tax is calculated not from the interest rate, but from the actual interest earned (earned funds) on the platform when investing in Polish loans at the moment when earned interest is transferred to your VIAINVEST investor account.
More information about tax issues on VIAINVEST, as well as references to legislative acts defining the taxation procedure may be found in VIAINVEST FAQ section.
