The Naked Taxpayer: When the Tax Man Comes to OnlyFans
Creators on OnlyFans are discovering a painful truth: nothing on the Internet ever truly disappears, tax authorities wield sophisticated artificial-intelligence algorithms, and they possess exactly zero sense of humor when it comes to undeclared income. What’s more, the tax man isn’t bashful about browsing OnlyFans, analyzing transactions, and tracking every subscriber. Over the past three years, there has been a dramatic surge in international tax audits and proceedings related to online earnings – from Florida to Ireland to Cyprus to Pakistan – proving beyond doubt that the era of anonymous digital income has definitively ended, and that digital erotica has become a veritable gold mine for tax agencies around the world.
OnlyFans is a British digital platform that, in less than a decade, has achieved the status of a global creator-economy phenomenon. Launched in London in November, 2016, by the entrepreneur Tim Stokely, it was born from a ten-thousand-pound loan from his father. The site initially allowed creators to publish paid content, and over time it gained fame as a space where erotic creators could monetize their work without intermediaries. The takeover of the company by Fenix International, owned by Leo Radvinsky, in 2018, cemented this direction and gave the platform its current identity.
Today, OnlyFans represents the most dramatic example of the creator-economy revolution – an economy in which the traditional intermediation of film studios, record labels, and publishers has been replaced by a direct relationship between creator and consumer. The platform serves 4.63 million content creators and 377.5 million registered fans (as of November, 2024), processing $7.22 billion annually in payments between users.
What makes OnlyFans exceptional within the global digital economy is not merely the scale of its operations but, above all, its extraordinary financial efficiency. According to an analysis by the firm Barchart in October, 2024, OnlyFans generates $37.6 million in revenue per employee – a figure that surpasses tech giants such as Nvidia ($3.6 million), Apple ($2.4 million), Meta ($2.2 million), and Google ($1.9 million). The platform achieves this while employing just forty-two to forty-six full-time staff, making it the most revenue-efficient company in the world.
While OnlyFans allows some creators to earn excellent money – more than three hundred creators earn over a million dollars annually – the financial reality for thousands of registered creators falls far short of their dreams. The average creator earns between a hundred and fifty and a hundred and eighty dollars per month. This significant disparity reflects the highly uneven income distribution typical of creator-economy platforms, where a small number of stars capture the lion’s share of revenue while the vast majority of creators earn modest sums.
Erotic Fantasies Meet Tax Reality
In virtually every jurisdiction worldwide, income from OnlyFans is treated as self-employment income. Creators are classified as independent contractors, meaning they bear full responsibility for reporting income and settling taxes. The platform does not withhold taxes at the source – this is not a classic employment relationship but rather a B2C model, where the creator operates their own business.
The United States: The Case of Kylie Leia Perez (Natalie Monroe)
The most publicized criminal case in the U.S. involves Kylie Leia Perez (stage name “Natalie Monroe”), a creator from Tampa, Florida, who earned more than $5.4 million on OnlyFans between 2019 and 2023. In August, 2025, federal prosecutors charged her with one count of filing a false tax return and four counts of failing to pay income tax. Prosecutors claim she evaded payment of at least $1.6 million in taxes.
If convicted on all charges, Perez faces a maximum of seven years in federal prison. She was arrested on August 14, 2025, and released on fifty-thousand-dollar bail. According to the indictment, Perez filed a fraudulent tax return for 2019 and failed to pay taxes entirely for 2020 through 2023, despite earning annually between two hundred and two thousand nine hundred and ninety-eight dollars and two million one hundred and thirty thousand eight hundred and ninety-eight dollars.
The case was investigated by I.R.S. Criminal Investigation, and “Natalie Monroe” is being prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Florida – indicating the highest level of priority for federal authorities.
Since late 2022, the I.R.S. has systematically targeted OnlyFans creators. Many attorneys specializing in tax disputes have reported that pairs of I.R.S. Special Agents from the Criminal Investigation division have visited the homes and business addresses of OnlyFans creators and their tax advisers, serving grand-jury subpoenas. This signifies Department of Justice involvement and a coördinated, nationwide operation.
Ireland: The Saga of the “Irish Viking” – When Vikings Forget the Tribute
Matthew Gilbert – known in the digital world as “The Irish Viking” – etched his name into the history of Irish tax disputes as the first high-profile OnlyFans content creator whose case ended with publication on the official list of defaulters maintained by Revenue (the Irish Revenue Commissioners) in March, 2025. The tax-defaulters list is an Irish institution of public shaming, where the names of individuals and companies whose tax arrears exceeded certain thresholds and were settled after fiscal intervention are published quarterly.
Gilbert built his brand on the image of a modern-day Viking – a bearded, muscular Irishman offering adult content to subscribers, which brought him between fifty thousand and fifty-four thousand euros monthly from a base of approximately three thousand paying fans. This translates to annual revenue hovering around six hundred thousand to six hundred and fifty thousand euros – a sum that would place him among the platform’s highest earners in Ireland.
The problem arose when Revenue conducted a tax audit and discovered that Gilbert had underreported his personal income by sixty-one thousand seven hundred and thirty-four euros. This is a classic case of underreporting – a situation in which a taxpayer reports some income but not all, often in the hope that the difference will escape the authorities’ notice. After the audit concluded, Gilbert had to personally settle eighty-eight thousand six hundred and eighty-one euros in liabilities, meaning that, in addition to back taxes, he also paid penalties and interest – standard practice in the Irish (as in the Polish) tax system, where payment delays result in daily compounding interest.
The case, however, was not limited to the individual. Gilbert also operated through a company, Matty Irish Viking Limited – a corporate structure that, in theory, was meant to professionalize the business and optimize taxes. Revenue conducted a separate audit of the company, uncovering far more serious irregularities: underreporting of corporate income tax, P.A.Y.E. (employee income tax), P.R.S.I. (social-insurance contributions), U.S.C. (Universal Social Charge – an Irish solidarity levy), and V.A.T., totalling a hundred and ninety-one thousand four hundred and sixty-four euros.
The total liabilities of Matty Irish Viking Limited, after adding penalties and interest, came to two hundred and sixty-six thousand six hundred and ninety-three euros – nearly three times the original underreporting. The story of the “Irish Viking” became emblematic of the Irish OnlyFans market for several reasons. First, Gilbert did not hide his activity – on the contrary, he actively built his brand, which facilitated Revenue’s identification of his income source. Second, it demonstrated that even relatively sophisticated corporate structures (limited-liability companies) do not protect against audit if employment obligations (P.A.Y.E., P.R.S.I.) and V.A.T. are not properly fulfilled. Third, public publication on the tax-defaulters list – which remains available online and is widely commented upon by Irish media – serves as a powerful deterrent for other creators.
Cyprus: The Great Purge in the Digital Gray Zone
October, 2025, brought a genuine revolution to Cyprus in the approach to taxing the digital economy. The Tax Department announced the results of a months-long intelligence operation that identified approximately three hundred individuals and legal entities – including a significant number of tax residents from other E.U. countries – who systematically earned income through OnlyFans without declaring a single euro cent of that income.
Cypriot tax authorities applied a method that is becoming the standard for twenty-first-century tax intelligence: systematic monitoring of social media combined with big-data analysis. Tax Department inspectors scanned thousands of profiles on Instagram, TikTok, and OnlyFans itself, identifying individuals manifesting lifestyles inadequate to their reported (or unreported) incomes. In some cases, they discovered creators earning up to five hundred thousand euros annually who, in the Cypriot tax system, were registered as people with no income whatsoever or declaring minimal amounts.
What is particularly interesting is that the Cypriot investigation quickly exceeded its original scope. Tax Department analysts noticed that the problem of undeclared digital income applies to a much broader spectrum of activity than just OnlyFans. Caught in the tax authorities’ net were beauticians offering treatments through Instagram booking, taxi drivers serving clients through apps and social media while bypassing official taxi corporations, hairdressers running “home salons” advertised via Facebook, travel agents organizing trips without business registration, and dozens of small businesses offering services exclusively through social-media channels, entirely outside the official economic circuit.
Cypriot authorities are currently preparing a mass notification campaign – each identified person will receive a formal notice requiring submission of corrected tax returns for periods in which undeclared income was obtained. The warnings are unequivocal: backdated taxation (retroactive taxation for all years in which undeclared activity was conducted), substantial penalties (significant financial penalties proportional to the scale of concealment), and – in the event of continued non-coöperation – potential criminal proceedings (the possibility of initiating criminal prosecution for tax fraud).
The Cypriot action also has an international dimension. As an E.U. member, Cyprus is covered by mechanisms for automatic exchange of tax information (D.A.C. directives), meaning that information about undeclared income of tax residents of other member states will be automatically transmitted to the appropriate tax administrations in their countries of residence. For many digital nomads who chose Cyprus as their operational base due to favorable tax rates, this may mean double trouble – both with the Cypriot tax authority and with authorities in their country of origin.
Epilogue: When Erotica Meets Accounting
OnlyFans has transformed the economics of the adult industry, democratizing content production and distribution, eliminating exploitative intermediaries, and giving creators eighty per cent of revenue instead of the twenty to thirty per cent in the traditional model.
But no revolution changes a fundamental law: in exchange for infrastructure, public order, and a legal system that enables business, the state demands its share. OnlyFans is no exception to this rule – it is merely the newest battlefield in the eternal war between those who earn and those who collect taxes.
The difference is that in previous epochs of this war, creators had an informational advantage – they could count on their income remaining invisible. In 2025, that advantage does not exist. Algorithms have triumphed over fantasy. The tax man sees everything.
The lesson for OnlyFans creators – and for anyone earning in the digital economy – is simple: you can be naked before the camera, but never before the tax authorities. The latter won’t pay for a subscription, but they’ll take their cut anyway. Better to give it to them voluntarily than wait for them to come take it by force.
Founder and Managing Partner of Skarbiec Law Firm, recognized by Dziennik Gazeta Prawna as one of the best tax advisory firms in Poland (2023, 2024). Legal advisor with 19 years of experience, serving Forbes-listed entrepreneurs and innovative start-ups. One of the most frequently quoted experts on commercial and tax law in the Polish media, regularly publishing in Rzeczpospolita, Gazeta Wyborcza, and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna. Author of the publication “AI Decoding Satoshi Nakamoto. Artificial Intelligence on the Trail of Bitcoin’s Creator” and co-author of the award-winning book “Bezpieczeństwo współczesnej firmy” (Security of a Modern Company). LinkedIn profile: 18 500 followers, 4 million views per year. Awards: 4-time winner of the European Medal, Golden Statuette of the Polish Business Leader, title of “International Tax Planning Law Firm of the Year in Poland.” He specializes in strategic legal consulting, tax planning, and crisis management for business.
