Tax Treatment of Amazon Vine Products under Spanish Personal Income Tax

Amazon Vine members may receive free samples of certain products sold on the platform in exchange for reviewing at least 80% of them.

What is Amazon Vine?

According to Amazon’s own description on its website:

“Amazon Vine is an invitation-only programme that selects the most insightful reviewers in the Amazon store to become Vine Voices. Vine Voices have the unique opportunity to request products for free and share their experiences with Amazon customers to help them make informed purchasing decisions.”

Tax treatment of samples received

The approach taken by the Directorate-General for Taxes (DGT) to compensation paid for taking part in surveys, opinion polls and similar activities depends on the capacity in which the person participates (see, among others, rulings V0962-13 and V3667-15).

Where the participants’ cooperation is an occasional activity—that is, they participate solely as respondents—and does not arise from an employment relationship (or a relationship that should be treated as employment because services are provided for remuneration on behalf of another person and under the employer’s organisation and direction), or from carrying on a professional or business activity (meaning that the cooperation does not result from the participant’s professional or business profile), the reward or compensation given to participants is classified, for Spanish Personal Income Tax purposes, as a capital gain. This follows from Article 33(1) of Law 35/2006 of 28 November on Personal Income Tax and the partial amendment of the laws on Corporation Tax, Non-Resident Income Tax and Net Wealth Tax, which provides:

“Capital gains and losses are changes in the value of a taxpayer’s assets that become apparent as a result of any change in their composition, unless this Law classifies them as income.”

This is the appropriate classification for the compensation in this case: the products themselves—or their use, if they must be returned—that are reviewed or rated. They are treated as income in kind under Article 42(1) of the Tax Law and valued in accordance with Articles 43 and 34 of that Law. Based on the terms of the ruling request, the reviewer’s opinion about the product, expressed in a review on the website that supplied it, does not arise from an employment relationship or from carrying on a professional or business activity as described above. Rather, the review is made in the capacity of an ordinary consumer within the reciprocal relationship between the product suppliers, who provide or allow use of the products, and the reviewer, who expresses an opinion as a consumer.

Finally, these capital gains are included in the general tax base as general income (under Article 45 of the Tax Law), pursuant to Article 48, which provides:

“The general tax base is the result of adding together the following balances:

a) The balance resulting, in each tax period, from integrating and offsetting exclusively against one another the income and income allocations referred to in Article 45 of this Law.

b) The positive balance resulting, in each tax period, from integrating and offsetting exclusively against one another capital gains and losses, excluding those referred to in the following article (those arising from the transfer of assets).

(…)”

Accordingly, these amounts should be included in the Personal Income Tax return as capital gains and losses not arising from the transfer of assets, which are included in the general tax base.