Gifted product and creator tax in Denmark: value, tax and reporting

Questions and answers

Is free product sent to influencers taxable?

Yes. The tax minister put it this way in October 2025: “If you have income via OnlyFans or other social media, you must pay tax on it. That applies whether you are paid in cash, products or gift cards.” Skattestyrelsen's guidance hub for content creators lists the categories explicitly - cash payment, products and gifts at market value, affiliate income, donations and tips, subscription income and special discounts - and deputy director Preben Buchholtz Hansen sums up the rule: “It is a simple basic rule of thumb that all income is taxable.” Sources: skm.dk, 30 October 2025; sktst.dk, 3 November 2025; guidance at skat.dk.

What is market value, and who sets it?

Market value is what the item would cost to acquire in ordinary open trade - not your cost price, and not zero because it was a sample you had in stock. In practice the relevant figure is the public retail price at the time the product was given. The payer is the party holding that information: you know the item, the price and the date. The creator does not necessarily, and a creator asked to estimate the value of a package a year later usually estimates low. That makes the value worth fixing in writing when the package goes out - with the source of the figure, not just the figure.

Does it apply to PR packages we send unsolicited?

For the creator: yes. Skattestyrelsen's guidance counts products and gifts received unsolicited towards taxable income at market value. For you as payer the picture differs - the reporting duties attach to vederlag, consideration given for something, and a package sent with no agreement for anything in return is not automatically that. The line between “unsolicited gift” and “payment for a post we were counting on” is a soft one, and it sits in what was actually agreed: where there was an agreement, skatteindberetningsloven § 44 reaches the product at market value, as set out below. Where a specific programme is genuinely unclear, that is the kind of question a binding ruling or an adviser resolves - not a rule of thumb. Sources: sktst.dk, 3 November 2025; Den juridiske vejledning A.B.1.2.8.7.

What is the difference between loaned and given?

The documentation. In SKM2026.31.LSR, Landsskatteretten held that products received count towards the VAT taxable amount unless it is documented that they were loaned and returned. Send a product for a shoot and get it back and it is a loan - but only if you can show it: an agreement to return, a date, and a receipt confirming the item actually came back. In that case the business could not show the products had gone back to the agency after use, and they stayed taxable on exactly that ground. Without the documentation, the starting point is that the product counts.

Three limits are worth stating plainly, because this point is easy to over-read in whichever direction you already favour. The ruling names the test and shows nothing passing it: one item did come out of the assessment, but on Skattestyrelsen's concession that it had never been received as payment at all - an absence of consideration, not a documented return. It is a VAT ruling, so it decides nothing about the income value you report, and on that question it is authority at one remove, reciting a separate income-tax decision that is not on the page. And it does not reach product given as payment for an agreed collaboration: there a return does not undo the agreement. Treat a documented return as the thing to have rather than as a result to count on. Source: SKM2026.31.LSR.

What does product mean for VAT?

It forms part of the taxable amount for the creator's supply, where that supply is VAT-liable. The same decision held that influencer collaborations with concrete contractual requirements - number of posts, publication timing, product visibility, tags and the brand's prior approval - are VAT-liable advertising services under momsloven § 4, and that the artist and journalist exemption does not apply. A pure barter arrangement in which the creator receives only product is therefore not VAT-free because no money moved: the value of the products is the consideration. Whether that triggers VAT registration for the creator depends on whether business turnover exceeds DKK 50,000 a year. Sources: SKM2026.31.LSR; A.B.1.2.2.2 (momsloven § 71 e(1)).

Do we have to report the value of product?

Yes, where the product was given for an agreed collaboration - and the provision that says so is not the one that covers a cash honorar. The monthly honorar report under skatteindberetningsloven § 4 is framed for vederlag paid i penge, so product does not travel on it. What reaches product is skatteindberetningsloven § 44: consideration for the advertising use of a person, or for the use of copyright and similar rights, reported monthly to the income register, and stk. 2 states in terms that the duty covers “såvel pengeydelser som naturalier” with naturalier valued at market value. The same section of Den juridiske vejledning adds that the duty applies regardless of whether the recipient is a natural or a legal person and regardless of whether the fee is VAT-liable - so neither an invoice with VAT on it nor a creator company takes a product collaboration out of your reporting.

Where the engagement is in substance employment, the rules switch track: the benefit-in-kind rules in ligningsloven § 16 and their reporting requirements apply instead, and tax and labour-market contribution must be withheld. Which track you are on turns on an overall assessment of the engagement; we cover that assessment and the liability behind it in the payer obligations guide. Sources: Den juridiske vejledning A.B.1.2.8.7; A.B.1.2.2.2.

Are gift cards different from product?

Easier in one respect and harder in another. The minister names gift cards in the same breath as cash and products, and for valuation they are the simplest case there is: the value is printed on the card, so there is nothing to argue about. What is not simple is whether a gift card counts as a means of payment - money, in substance - or as a good received in kind. That distinction is not cosmetic: labour-market contribution attaches directly to a vederlag paid in money, while for goods it runs through a narrow statutory list that ordinary product does not appear on. Landsskatteretten has held a fee paid in the stablecoin Dai to be a means of payment “sidestillet med penge” on the asset's tradability (SKM2025.56.LSR), and a closed-loop voucher redeemable in a single shop is not obviously the same instrument as an open gift card. It is decided case by case, we do not treat it as settled, and a programme paying creators in gift cards at any volume should have the point confirmed rather than assumed. What is settled is the practical failure: gift cards get issued outside whatever system the rest of the programme runs in, and so never reach any record at all.

Travel is worth naming here too, because it is the same trap one row down. A press trip is board and lodging, and board and lodging is one of the benefits the labour-market contribution rules list by name. A listed benefit carries its own valuation rule rather than a market value you set, and the contribution answer follows the list rather than the product reasoning above - so travel is not simply product with a different price tag. That reading of a press trip is ours and no published source states it, which is precisely why it belongs with the things to confirm rather than assume. Sources: skm.dk, 30 October 2025; SKM2025.56.LSR.

What should we document when we send product?

Five things, all of them available the day the package goes out: what was sent, to whom, when, what the market value was and where that figure comes from, and whether anything was agreed in return. If the product was loaned, the return agreement and the receipt confirming it came back sit on top. This is not a large apparatus - it is one row in a record, written once and never reconstructed. The alternative is hunting through last autumn's shipping notes while trying to remember what the collection retailed for at the time.

In short

Four things to hold on to

• Value is income, and it is yours to report. Product given for an agreed collaboration is taxable to the creator at market value, and skatteindberetningsloven § 44, stk. 2 makes payment in kind reportable by the payer at that same value. Gift cards and travel each raise a further question of their own.
• The payer knows the value best. You have the item, the price and the date. The creator has a guess unless you supply it.
• A loan has to be documentable. Without documentation of return, the product counts towards the VAT taxable amount, per SKM2026.31.LSR.
• Barter is not outside the system. An arrangement paid entirely in goods is still consideration - with the same VAT and reporting questions as a cash fee.

This page is general information about the rules, not tax advice on a specific matter. Every reference points to the authorities' own sources. Last reviewed 11 September 2026 against Den juridiske vejledning 2026-2.