Prolific Academic Survey Alerts

ElefantEd

Just doing my tax return. I need to work out how much I've earned on PA in the last financial year but there doesn't seem to be a convenient way of doing this from the PA site. The "Download Full Submission History" button generates a spreadsheet but it includes studies I've returned and although I could strip out rows without completion codes, this migth get rid of some where I didn't get a code but did get paid.

I suppose I could approach it another way and just look at payments from them into my paypal account. I was wondering if anyone had a better option?

elsien

I had an email from them at the end of April:


“In accordance with DAC7 regulations, we, Prolific, as a reporting platform operator, are required to provide both the tax authorities of an EU Member State and our reportable sellers with the information we submit regarding their activities.

This notification is to inform you that as of 31 December 2024, you have been designated as a reportable seller.

As required by DAC7 provisions, we are sharing the relevant details with you, ensuring transparency about the information reported to the tax authorities. This includes a detailed breakdown of your earnings and transaction count (i.e., the number of studies taken part in) for each quarter.
(Please note that any earnings originally in USD have been converted to their GBP equivalent value).

Reported Information Details:
Reporting Period: 1 January 2024 to 31 December 2024”

It then gave me a summary of everything I earned for each quarter in that , with a total for the year, and ended it by saying

“Costs & Deductions: No costs or deductions were made on your gross earnings and therefore the gross figures above are the figures which have been reported to the tax authorities as of January 31st 2025.”

silvercar

ElefantEd said:

Just doing my tax return. I need to work out how much I've earned on PA in the last financial year but there doesn't seem to be a convenient way of doing this from the PA site. The "Download Full Submission History" button generates a spreadsheet but it includes studies I've returned and although I could strip out rows without completion codes, this migth get rid of some where I didn't get a code but did get paid.

I suppose I could approach it another way and just look at payments from them into my paypal account. I was wondering if anyone had a better option?

When I did a data dump from prolific, it gave wrong figures for the bonuses. I used a PayPal search for prolific payments.

MollyR

I extract the data from my Paypal records.  Where I can be certain, I exclude the bonuses which would come under the heading of "draws" rather than "earnings".

silvercar

MollyR said:

I extract the data from my Paypal records.  Where I can be certain, I exclude the bonuses which would come under the heading of "draws" rather than "earnings".

Interesting, I would have thought bonuses from draws that are a direct result of work would be taxable. 

silvercar

The advantage of using PayPal is that you are totalling “pay” received in the financial year, rather than according to the dates of the surveys. This is the correct way to do it as you want earnings received during the financial year, not when they were earned but not actually paid. Obvious comparison with a paye job where you look at your earnings in the year not when you completed work. The further advantage is that you can choose whether to withdraw in early April or hold off to the new financial year.

Mum161111

The only payments "in" I receive in PayPal are from Prolific.  I transfer them to my Current account then I can search: "Payments received from PayPal" and enter the date range: e.g. 06 April 2024 to 05 April 2025.

I comes up with all the payments received and gives a total.  This is the total I entered for "Surveys" income on my Self Assessment.

MollyR

silvercar said:

MollyR said:

I extract the data from my Paypal records.  Where I can be certain, I exclude the bonuses which would come under the heading of "draws" rather than "earnings".

Interesting, I would have thought bonuses from draws that are a direct result of work would be taxable. 

Well, I am no expert;  but last year I dug around a lot on the HMRC pages when preparing my tax return, and I came away with the strong impression that wins from a lottery or random draw of any sort are not taxable.  For instance, I enter a lot of competitions, and now and again I win some money - but unless the competition has involved some kind of test of skill, it is a random draw, in the same classification as the National Lottery.  And some Prolific studies say things along the lines of "When the study is complete we will randomly select one of the questions, and if your answer to it was within a certain range you will go into a random draw to win a bonus".  As I see it, there is absolutely no way to "earn" that bonus.

However, there may be tax accountants out there who can tell us absolutely differently!

silvercar

MollyR said:

silvercar said:

MollyR said:

I extract the data from my Paypal records.  Where I can be certain, I exclude the bonuses which would come under the heading of "draws" rather than "earnings".

Interesting, I would have thought bonuses from draws that are a direct result of work would be taxable. 

Well, I am no expert;  but last year I dug around a lot on the HMRC pages when preparing my tax return, and I came away with the strong impression that wins from a lottery or random draw of any sort are not taxable.  For instance, I enter a lot of competitions, and now and again I win some money - but unless the competition has involved some kind of test of skill, it is a random draw, in the same classification as the National Lottery.  And some Prolific studies say things along the lines of "When the study is complete we will randomly select one of the questions, and if your answer to it was within a certain range you will go into a random draw to win a bonus".  As I see it, there is absolutely no way to "earn" that bonus.

However, there may be tax accountants out there who can tell us absolutely differently!

I'm no expert, but I would have thought if the qualifying condition to enter the draw was to be earning money, then it would qualify. If you transfer the analogy to an office work environment, how would it work? be employed on X team and we will offer a bonus as a draw to X% of the team? That would be too easy to evade tax rules eg half the team win a tax free bonus and the others get slightly more to compensate tax as a regular pay type bonus - it is open to abuse so wouldn't be allowed.

silvercar

https://www.gov.uk/hmrc-internal-manuals/business-income-manual/bim45090

"Prizes, awards or other incentives provided by a trader may be taxable in the hands of the recipient."

"If the award is in the form of cash, then the taxable receipt is the amount of cash received."