Back in January, the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine considered the issue of blocking tax invoices and instructed the government to conduct an audit, but the results are still unknown. At UNN's request, the National Security and Defense Council refused to say whether they would consider the issue again. At the same time, according to Nina Yuzhanina, a member of the Rada Committee on Finance, Taxation and Customs Policy, the committee has not seen such a report either. According to her, the head of the Tax Committee, Danylo Hetmantsev, is now trying to legalize the tool of blocking invoices through changes to the Tax Code.
According to the National Security and Defense Council, on January 23, the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine was instructed to "immediately audit the system of monitoring risks and criteria for blocking tax invoices and procedures and criteria for unblocking them."
At the same time, the National Security and Defense Council, referring to information with restricted access, added that they could not say whether the issue of blocking tax invoices would be considered again.
Nina Yuzhanina, a member of the Rada's tax committee, in a comment to UNN did not rule out that the government had ignored this order.
"This (audit results - ed.) was not discussed either among the committee members or by the committee chairman - nothing was said about, for example, making any changes to Resolution 1165, which approved the procedure for blocking tax invoices. Therefore, I am sure that nothing is being done on this issue," Yuzhanina said.
The MP suggests that the government has instructed Danylo Hetmantsev, chairman of the Rada's tax committee, to draft a bill that would demonstrate that there are taxpayers in Ukraine who are treated very well and with a good service by the controlling authorities. Therefore, a draft law on the "white business club" was prepared. However, Mr. Hetmantsev decided to include the definition of a risky enterprise in the body of the Tax Code in parallel with the same document.
"This is a great danger, because for decades we have been avoiding Klymenko's and Azarov's approaches to these lists of payers, which were previously ranked on several platforms. So, risky business is the same as different platforms. That is why this return, a certain inability to offer new, open and transparent approaches, is the biggest disadvantage of this government. They are unable to offer anything else... There is a law, there are direct provisions of the law - please, does the taxpayer comply with them or not? And there is no reason for an official from a controlling body to make a different decision based on his or her opinion or assumptions. And this blocking and determination of the enterprise as a risky one, assignment of such a status to it are just assumptions," Yuzhanina explained.
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The European Business Association (EBA) notes the aggravation of the situation with the blocking of tax invoices since the end of February. It suggested that instead of freezing business activities by blocking them, the State Tax Service should conduct tax audits in case of questions to the companies' activities. The EBA emphasized that the tax legislation of the EU countries does not contain provisions on blocking tax invoices.
As of March 1, according to Yuzhanina , the list of risky taxpayers included more than 30,000 legal entities and individuals, or 20% of all taxpayers who filed tax returns. In February, 26 thousand taxpayers had 180 thousand tax invoices and adjustment calculations blocked for the amount of UAH 4.8 billion in VAT.
MP Mykhailo Tsymbalyuk in a commentary to UNN said that the National Security and Defense Council should consider the issue of massive blocking of tax invoices at its meeting as one that threatens national security.
Recall
Blocking of tax invoices is one of the main problems that Ukrainian entrepreneurs complain about in the field of tax administration. In general, according to the Business Ombudsman Council's statistics , 57% of complaints from business representatives in the third quarter of 2023 concerned tax issues.
As noted by business ombudsman Roman Vashchuk in an interview , the problem for business is not even the level of taxes, but the style of administration. He also added that tax and customs lose 90-94% of their cases in courts, either in the first instance or on appeal to the Supreme Court.
According to experts, this situation with the courts indicates that the tax authorities are abusing their powers, as the courts are breaking down these decisions. Some, such as economic analyst Pavlo Sebastianovych, directly calls these "schemes.
Among the main such schemes, he names fictitious exports, registration of fictitious VAT from fictitious companies, export of goods under fictitious documents with fictitious VAT and refund of real VAT, twists, blocking tax invoices, granting risky status to an enterprise and organizing shadow schemes to remove this status.
Dmytro Oleksiyenko, a member of the Taxpayers Association Board, believes that MP Danylo Hetmantsev, head of the Verkhovna Rada Tax Committee, is behind this administration policy, because no important decisions are made at the State Tax Service without his knowledge. And he actually runs the tax office through his former assistant Yevhen Sokur.
At the same time, Mr. Hetmantsev called his activities in relation to the tax service "parliamentary control." He also rejected accusations that he was taking over the powers of the executive branch, saying that he was simply helping entrepreneurs.