Tax war with Apple smuggling: how market participants react
Kyiv • UNN
The State Tax Service uncovered schemes to evade VAT for more than UAH 286 million in the "Yabko" and Yabluka networks.
The tax authorities have declared a fight against the detection of smuggling channels for Apple supplies to Ukraine. On the eve of the head of the State Tax Service Ruslan Kravchenko reported that a scheme of "business fragmentation" was discovered in two networks selling Apple brand equipment, which allowed them to avoid paying VAT of more than UAH 286 million. The news caused a wide discussion among market participants, writes UNN.
Kravchenko did not name the networks that were exposed in tax evasion. However, according to journalist-investigator Yevhen Plinskyi, we are talking about "Yabko" and Yabluka.
"The first network is Lviv's YABKO, which is part of Petro Dyminskyi's pool of businesses. The second is Yabluka, which belongs to Zaporizhia businessman and local deputy Artur Gatunko, who has close ties to the prosecutor's office," he wrote on Facebook.
The news was reacted to, in particular, by the CEO of Comfy, Ihor Khyzhniak. He thanked the head of the State Tax Service, Ruslan Kravchenko, and his team for their attention to the problem of shadow economy and "frank conversation." "After all, defeating the gray market is our common task for the sake of Ukraine's victory," he wrote on Facebook.
Khyzhniak noted that "the gray market of equipment and electronics continues to grow steadily." "Over the weekend, we conducted a wave of control purchases of iPhones. The results are unchanged: non-fiscal checks and fiscal checks with elements of forgery, and all purchased smartphones are unofficially imported into Ukraine, because they do not have Ukrainian labeling and other mandatory information," he said.
According to him, if the situation does not change, then, according to analysts at Asbis and COMFY, 80% of new iPhones in Ukraine will be "gray" this year. This means that the state will lose 7 billion hryvnias of unpaid VAT on just one gadget. And in general, the budget losses in the household appliances and electronics market will reach at least 11 billion hryvnias.
Fuel market expert Serhiy Kuyun stated that yesterday the head of the State Tax Service Ruslan Kravchenko "personally pleased" him very much.
His subordinates finally cracked down on the most reckless seller of "apples" - "Yabko", as well as a less large-scale, but no less audacious network Yabluka with the same specialization
"I already wrote that at the end of last year I was looking for a Macbook for my child, and I found that the price range is 30% (of course, in favor of "Yabko"). In January, I was interested in iPhones, the same story - all these "apples" are out of competition. A "discount" of up to 500 bucks on each device! How???!!!
For me, the answer was obvious right away - taxes. More precisely, their absence in the low price. .... The confirmations poured in by themselves. At the same time, an epic video of Yevhen Plinskyi surfaced, where two representatives of "Yabko" on the "tax" parliamentary committee were "confessed" by Danylo Hetmantsev.", - he wrote.
According to him, the tax authorities conducted a "real raid."
"They made 150 test purchases, immediately found 22 cases of issuing non-fiscal settlement documents - essentially fake papers that only imitate checks, tax officials write.
They also carried out timekeeping of revenue - this is when they first count the number of buyers "from the bushes", and then go in and check the data of cash registers. So, the constant presence of tax officials stimulated the growth of revenue in stores by 10 times. That is, one out of ten buyers was punched through the cash register.
Next. Facts of artificial division of sales by these networks have been documented: legal entities involved up to 300 related sole proprietors on a simplified system. Only for 170 sole proprietors already identified by us, the turnover is UAH 1.72 billion.
It turns out that they can if they want to!", - Kuyun noted.
