The Verkhovna Rada passed a law criminalizing smuggling, incorporating amendments proposed by businesses after the draft was
finalized in light of their comments; the law was necessary to receive €1.5 billion in EU aid.
The Rada passed the draft law #5420 on criminalization of smuggling with committee amendments proposed by Ukrainian business.
business. The decision was voted for by 248 MPs. The adoption of the document was announced by the first
Deputy Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Finance, Taxation and
Customs Policy, Yaroslav Zheleznyak, reports UNN.
Once again, I thank the business for changing our position so quickly together)
We have six months to reboot the BES)
Details
In particular, Zheleznyak noted that the Committee's version of the draft law was adopted yesterday, which
the amendments insisted on by the business.
In particular, according to the MP, at least five changes were made to the draft law.
1) The thresholds for smuggling of goods are proposed to be raised by
5 times.
2) The thresholds for excisable goods are to be raised by 2 times.
3) The entry into force of the commodity tax is postponed until mid-2024.
year. As I said, this is the IMF's deadline for rebooting the BES
4) Numerous insistences of business on the indication of
of the intentional form of guilt, only in the presence of which actions can be qualified
actions as a crime.
5) significantly limited the possible cases of prosecution for
liability under "smuggling" articles for submitting documents with false information - in
false information - in the amended version, they should be the basis for
movement of goods, should be subject to mandatory declaration in accordance with customs
legislation, as well as have an impact on determining the amount of customs payments or
compliance with non-tariff regulation measures.
It should be noted that the adoption of this draft law is a requirement of the macro-financial
from the EU for EUR 1.5 billion this year.
As a reminder
On December 6, MPs saidthat the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Law Enforcement
has reconsidered its decision on the draft law on criminalization of smuggling
of goods and excisable goods, as well as false declaration of goods (No.
5420).
У
same day, the business called on MPs to finalize the draft law No. 5420 on the criminalization of smuggling.
In particular,
the European Business Association noted that the hottest issues for business are
several aspects: in particular, the threshold of liability for customs offenses - 147
thousand of unpaid payments is unreasonably low (for comparison,
the liability for tax evasion is triggered in case of non-payment of
UAH 3 million); the draft law provides for too wide a range of
punishment (a relatively small fine of UAH 17 thousand or imprisonment for
for a long term of up to 11 years, which entails multiple corruption risks); and
etc.