Business Ombudsman: Tax authorities have a secret plan to collect additional fees from entrepreneurs during inspections

Business representatives complain to the Business Ombudsman Council that tax authorities, when they come to inspect a business, demand to see at least some violations in order to issue a fine. Obviously, they have a secret plan to collect additional fees from entrepreneurs. This was stated by business ombudsman Roman Vashchuk, reports UNN.

"We often hear from firms that come to us either as complainants or as participants in discussions/surveys that tax authorities come to them and say: "Give us at least something, at least some violation, so that we can issue additional charges, so that we can fine you somehow, otherwise we will not be allowed back to our regional or central tax office." Because there is obviously an unspoken plan for additional fees, the existence of which is denied," said Roman Vashchuk during a discussion organized by the Center for Economic Strategy.

According to him, this way the tax authorities demotivate businesses from being the "whitest". He believes that the tax authorities should reward entrepreneurs who work honestly and added that he is currently looking for a company in Ukraine that has received at least some kind of letter of gratitude for fulfilling all tax obligations.

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European Business The European Business Association, which regularly evaluates the Tax Index, notes that the number of complaints from Ukrainian business representatives about unreasonable information requests and artificial blocking of tax invoices has increased significantly over the past year.

According to  statistics of the Business Ombudsman Council, in the third quarter of 2023, 57% of complaints from business representatives concerned tax issues.

As business ombudsman Roman Vashchuk noted earlier, the problem with business is not even the level of taxes, but the style of administration. He also added that the tax and customs authorities lose 90-94% of their cases in courts.

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, explicitly calls them "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 of tax invoices, granting risky status to a company and organization of 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, as 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.