Hungary Moves Further Toward Taxing Prostitution

Hungary is more or less bringing prostitution out of the shadows and into the mainstream, at least when it comes to income taxes. As we wrote a while back, the EU is going to fund programs to educate prostitutes in business decisions. Recently, as covered over at Caboodle.hu, Hungary's tax office APEH is aiding prostitutes in an attempt to take their transactions out of the black market and into the regular one, so that they become tax-paying entrepreneurs. But of course, it's not as simple as that, since an article from Penzcentrum.hu observes that instead of allowing women to become legitimately self-employed, a Baranya County Court recently ruled that prostitutes are required to register with the tax office. So while one measure is designed to allow the girls to bring themselves out of the shadows, the approach adopted by Baranya County seems to say "now you're legit, so pay your damn taxes." It shouldn't surprise anyone that with these conflicting and somewhat contradictory measures, no one really seems to be clear what's going on, ourselves included.