Expenditure on Advertising in Social Networks: Accounting and Taxation

Today, the most popular and most effective form of advertising is advertising on social networks. Income from advertising makes social networks the most profitable business in the information sphere. For enterprises, advertising in social networks is a relatively new opportunity to offer consumers their goods, work and services, so an accountant may have some difficulties to identify the costs of such advertising as an accounting object. The purpose of the article is to substantiate the procedure for documentary confirmation and the disclosure of the methodical foundations of accounting and taxation for advertising costs on social networks. The advantages of advertising on social networks were disclosed. Such advertising allows you to solve several problems at once. It was revealed that within one business day an enterprise can pay the cost of advertising services in social networks in a currency in an equivalent of not more than UAH 150,000 from a corporate payment card. This restriction is due to the fact that the service provider is a non-resident, and payment can only be carried out with a corporate payment card, having previously purchased foreign currency. The study of the problematic aspects of documentary support of operations for payment of advertising services by an accountable person using a corporate payment card was carried out from the perspective of a system analysis and taking into account the peculiarities of the national tax system. It was proved that in order to avoid disputes with fiscal authorities it is advisable for an accountant to generate additional documents containing all the required details of the identification of a business transaction. Such documents may include: an order from the head to conduct an advertising campaign in a particular social network; other documents on the conduct of the advertising campaign by the enterprise (printed photo reports, screenshots of the ads posted on the social network site that allow identifying the goods / services advertised by the enterprise and, accordingly, the information provided about them as advertising, the report of the responsible employee on the conducted advertising events); documents on the implementation of expenses and the provision of advertising services to the enterprise (advance report of the responsible employee on the payment of advertising services using a corporate payment card, bank statement, report of transactions made based on the social network receipts with all the necessary details for the initial document). The article discloses the methodical principles of accounting of expenditure on advertising in social networks and the calculation and payment of tax payments for such services.