The State Tax Service spoke about vulnerabilities in the retail sector
Kyiv • UNN
Over the past 5 months, inspections have revealed typical violations in retail. These include fictitious checks, sales without software and hardware, and splitting into individual entrepreneurs. Despite the increase in revenue, the sector leads in violations.
Tax audits in the retail sector over the past five months highlight typical industry violations. In particular, it concerns fictitious checks, release without the use of software, division into sole proprietors. This was stated by Deputy Head of the State Tax Service Lesia Karnaukh during the VIII International Specialized Exhibition of Retail and Commercial Real Estate RAU Expo 2025, UNN reports.
Details
Karnaukh noted that in many regions, retail is the leader in tax payments.
"Wholesale and retail trade remains the engine in many regions of Ukraine," Karnaukh said.
The Deputy Head of the State Tax Service, in addition, added that retail made a significant contribution to the overfulfillment of the plan to replenish the state budget for payments collected by the tax authorities. Thus, the State Tax Service for 5 months fulfilled the plan for fees by 111%, in absolute figures this is plus 52 billion to the budget. Of these 52 billion, according to Karnaukh, 51 billion is the share of retail.
About violations
The Deputy Head of the State Tax Service also spoke about violations in the retail sector.
"Unfortunately, 16.5 thousand actual inspections in the last 5 months indicate that we have typical violations, including in the retail sector. Of course, the situation is changing, and the State Tax Service also thanks for this. We see this through our RROs (registrars of settlement operations - ed.), through revenues that, compared to 2024, in 5 months of 2025, the volume of revenue through RROs increased by 23.9%. Despite this, we also see through our actual inspections that we have fictitious checks, release without the use of software, division into sole proprietors, and it is the sphere of wholesale and retail trade that, unfortunately, still leads in this story," Karnaukh noted.
According to her, the tax authorities also see salaries in envelopes - in this context, the tax authorities are working closely with the Bureau of Economic Security.
Another problem that Karnaukh mentioned is the withdrawal of profits to foreign jurisdictions. This is facilitated, for example, by the fact that imports often enter Ukraine from jurisdictions where it is impossible to track a fair price for a particular product. There are also cases when someone's development, for example, a software product, is registered to a company with foreign registration and a crazy royalty is paid to it.
"We understand why this is being done. This is also the subject of our joint work with law enforcement agencies, these are the measures for which we are implementing the control function. In fact, the key task for any civil servant in Ukraine is to be a partner in everything, to be united. And we, as the State Tax Service, also call for partnership, for conscientious performance of our duties, because this is not a question of how the tax authorities will fulfill their indicators. This is a question of whether we will have money for education, medicine and the protection of our state," Karnaukh stressed.