The Phoenix within me

Rising from my own ashes

This is not a success story, it's a survival tale. It’s a story of fear, uncertainty, and the harsh reality of small independents trying to survive. For two years we lived under a sword of Damocles. Letters, fines, accusations — even though we followed the rules. It wore down our bodies, our minds, our family. And yet… there was light. A small flame that refused to die out, people who kept us standing, and lessons I still carry with me today.

I am a visual artist. My work is to create images, and on those images I charge copyright royalties. That belongs to our profession; it’s a preferential regime specific to the creative sector—just as every sector has its own regimes. But honestly? I have zero knowledge of it. No desire, no energy, and no room in my head to delve into it. We do what our accountants advise us. They ask the questions, explain the rules, and we follow. Trust, in other words.

When COVID broke out, everything changed. Like so many others, assignments came to a halt and work became scarce. Financially, those were heavy years. To keep our heads above water, we decided to lower my salary. We supplemented that a little with copyright royalties—completely legal, completely within the lines. We’re not people who want to exploit the system. Whoever does that pays the price sooner or later.

But to the authorities, poor figures aren’t a sign of difficult times; they’re an alarm bell. Suddenly we were on a checklist. And then a machine starts turning that you’d rather never see working. For the government, bad numbers are often not proof of crisis, but of fraud. And fraud must be investigated. That process is not only emotionally heavy; it’s financially draining. Every hour someone spends on your file is neatly charged and billed to you.

Fortunately, our accountants stood firm. They slogged through mountains of paperwork and regulations, fought for us with everything they had. Eventually the conclusion read: “We find no visible infringement at the company.” Relief, I thought. But there was a footnote in the file: the case was being forwarded to personal taxation.

A few months later the bomb dropped. Where the company went free, we were now targeted personally. Suddenly there was an assessment of €35,000 on our doormat. Initially it even seemed to be €90,000, but that was because the letters were so complex and written in jargon that we misinterpreted them. Only after a month was that mistake corrected. But even €35,000, payable within a month, was exorbitant and absurd.

Lawyers were brought in, invoices kept piling up. What followed was a correspondence war in a language we didn’t master. My lawyer even used ChatGPT to make letters readable for me—to translate them from unfathomable legalese into plain human language. But even then, it remained almost incomprehensible for us.

And yet: we had done nothing wrong. We had no knowledge of the subject matter, had applied no creative interpretations. We simply did what our advisers told us. Nothing more, nothing less.

Still, we were treated like fraudsters. For two years we lived under the sword of Damocles. Every day began with fear. Opening the mailbox meant heart palpitations. Checking your email triggered panic: another reminder, another sanction. Even on birthdays, at Christmas or New Year, on weekends—the government did not let go. The clock kept ticking, the letters kept coming.

As if it couldn’t get more cynical: it looked as if we were sitting on a pile of money, cheating the system. But the people who truly know us, who come to our home, know how we live. Decent, honest, but with no margin. No luxury life, no bags of cash. Reality was the opposite of the picture the authorities painted of us.

The most cynical of all? The government didn’t even know what profession I had. They looked only at numbers and data. A simple glance at my website would have knocked down many of their arguments. But they didn’t bother.

And as if that wasn’t enough, the file was passed on to other bodies. The National Social Security Office (RSZ) was also notified that so-called fraud had been committed. And so more letters arrived: another €12,000 to pay. The chain seemed endless, merciless.

Meanwhile, more was going on. Because this case wasn’t the only battle. At home we also had a very stressful, completely separate situation that exhausted us to the core. And on top of that there was health—both physical and mental—which began to suffer under the pressure and constant tension. It wasn’t a single battle; it was a frontal assault on three fronts at once: private life, work, and body.

For me it became a daily fight to battle on all those fronts at the same time. But it drained me more than it helped. The family still had to keep running, money still had to come in, and my body had to heal to make the first two even possible. Mentally… mentally I’m only doing that work now. Now that most battles have been fought.

We tried to stay upright, but we felt like boxers curled up in a corner, taking blow after blow. There was nothing left to do but absorb it and hope it would be over someday.

I’ll be honest: in that period I often thought of giving up. That way out was tempting, almost comforting. And yet somewhere inside me, a small flame kept burning. A spark of life I clung to with all my strength. That—and two or three good friends, my wonderful wife, and the endless love for my two daughters—kept me standing. Without them, I wouldn’t have made it.

Living under constant pressure for such a long time is ruinous. It wears down your body and your mind. I still carry the scars today. They are healing slowly, but they remain visible and tangible.

Not long ago a decision finally came. Once again, the authorities found no grounds to convict us. And yet we still had to cough up €10,000—because, in their view, lowering a salary and compensating a bit with copyright royalties isn’t justified. Plus, of course, the mountain of legal and accounting fees. Officially, then, we are the “winners” in this case. But it doesn’t feel that way. It feels like a bitter victory.

We won, but at a price that nearly cost us our lives, our health, our family, and our future. And all of this while we never intended to evade anything. We simply followed advice, trusted the people who should have known. It reminds me of Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s Skin in the Game: others made the choices, but we bore the full risk.

Today we’re trying to shake off the chronic fear, to get back on our feet, to look ahead again, to dream again. But that takes time. A lot of time.

And to be very clear: I’m not placing blame on our accountants or our lawyers. On the contrary. They both gave everything to defend us, and I am immensely grateful to them for that. We fully support their choices and their way of working. My indignation is directed solely at how the system operates. The coldness, the arbitrariness, the blind fixation on numbers and data without seeing the reality behind them—that is what I still can’t accept.

Meanwhile, I see ads on Instagram touting tax shelters and copyright perks for the TV world. It’s beyond parody.

What makes it all even more cynical is this: before we were taxed, no one ever called me just to ask for a general explanation—what I do, how my work is structured. Not a single attempt at dialogue, no chance to explain. There wasn’t a trace of human approach in this entire process. While the numbers spun and were coldly calculated on paper, those decisions had an enormous human impact. Almost ruinous.

Yet I also learned a lot in this period. About myself, about friendships, about my boundaries and my weaknesses. But also about my strengths. I saw the true colors of many people—including my own. A valued acquaintance said to me in the middle of all this: “And you still find all of this educational, don’t you?” And he was right. Painful as it was, I took an awful lot away from it.

I hesitated before publishing this story. Because in doing so, I’m making myself publicly vulnerable. Maybe clients will look at me differently, since most people only want to see the strong and positive side. And yes, I am strong and positive. But by telling this story honestly, I want to encourage others who are going through something similar. And deep down, I hope this post can also spark change: that the world of the small self-employed shifts, that we are finally seen as hard-working people rather than treated by the government as parasites living off a system. That change would be wonderful. But even if it doesn’t happen, I’ll already be grateful if sharing this can give support to someone else.