In the first quarter of 2024 businesses complained the most about the Tax Service - Business Ombudsman Council

In the first quarter of 2024, entrepreneurs complained the most about the tax service, law enforcement agencies were in second place, and Customs was in third place. This was reported by the Council of the business ombudsman, writes UNN.

"The number of appeals to the Business Ombudsman Council has increased. In the first quarter of 2024, the Business Ombudsman Council received 345 appeals from business representatives, of which the institution closed 162 cases. The price of eight hits is higher compared to the fourth quarter of 2023. The top three business problems again included tax issues (60%), actions of law enforcement agencies (14%) and customs issues (7%)," The Business Ombudsman Council said in a statement.

The organization clarified that in the first quarter of this year, the Tax Service received 207 complaints. Their number remained almost unchanged compared to the previous quarter (206 complaints).

"The council found out that more than 99% of tax revenues are provided precisely at the expense of voluntary payment of taxes, and the share of revenues from additional charges determined as a result of inspections over the past 6 years has not reached even 1%," the report says.

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Last week, a new wave of blocking tax invoices began – a tool that the head of the tax committee of the parliament, Daniil Hetmantsev, came up with to increase pressure on Business. The head of the #Savefop movement, Serhiy Dorotich, said in an exclusive comment to UNN that an audit of the risk monitoring system and criteria for blocking invoices appointed by the Cabinet of ministers could provoke it.

At the end of May, the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine instructed the Ministry of finance, the State Audit Service and the state tax service to conduct an audit of the tax invoice blocking system within six months .

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Blocking tax invoices is one of the main problems that Ukrainian entrepreneurs complain about in the field of tax administration. In general, as indicated in the statistics of the Business Ombudsman Council, in the third quarter of 2023, 57% of complaints from business representatives related to tax issues. According to MP Mykhailo Tsymbalyuk, blocking tax invoices has become a serious problem, which threatens the national security of Ukraine, as it stops the activities of enterprises and disrupts economic operations.

As noted Business Ombudsman Roman Vashchuk, the problem in business is not even in the level of taxes, but in the style of administration. In addition, he added that the tax and customs authorities lose 90-94% of cases in the courts – either in the first instance, or in an appeal to the Supreme Court.

According to experts, this situation with the courts indicates the abuse of their powers by the tax authorities, because the courts break these decisions. Some, such as economic analyst Pavel Sebastianovich, directly call these "schemes".

Among the main such schemes, he calls fictitious exports, registration of fictitious VAT from fictitious companies, export of goods under fictitious documents with fictitious VAT and return of real VAT, twists, blocking of tax invoices, granting the status of a risky enterprise and organizing shadow schemes to remove this status.

Dmytro Alekseyenko, a member of the Council of the Association of taxpayers, believes that people's deputy, chairman of the tax committee of the Verkhovna Rada Daniil Hetmantsev is behind such a policy of administration, because no important decisions are made in the state tax service without his knowledge. And he actually manages the tax service through his former assistant Yevgeny Sokur.

At the same time, Hetmantsev himself called his tax activities "parliamentary control". He also rejected accusations that he is taking over the powers of the executive branch, pointing out that he simply helps entrepreneurs.