tax implications for affiliate marketing

nino1

I have an ecommercce site and much of my sales are coming from affilate marketing.
Its basically where an influencer promotes my products and i pay the influencer a commission.
I have 50+ influencers doing so.

Is there any way to process this without being seen as an employer and liable to employers PRSI and other taxes?

Thanks

TaxPro

Whether someone is an employee (and therefore the employer is liable to withhold payroll taxes, pay employer PRSI, etc) or an independent contractor is based on the facts of each case. There are no clearly defined rules and what a legal contract says is pretty much disregarded in favour of what the economic reality is.

Determining the relationship is based on broad principles set out in case law. Does the individual control their own working hours? Do they provide themselves with their own tools? Do they determine how best to do a task rather than be told exactly what to do? Do they do work for other businesses? Do they work only when called on or is there a set schedule of hours? All of these would point to independent contractor.

I don't know enough about your relationship with the influencers to make the determination, but it's likely that if they have creative control over their own channels and how they do their work, they are probably not your employees.