UUIE President Calls to Name Tax Officers Who Harm Business
Kyiv • UNN
The President of the UUIE calls for publicly naming the names of tax officials who unreasonably harm business by blocking tax invoices or opening unjustified criminal cases.
The names of officials who harm business by blocking tax invoices or unreasonably opening criminal proceedings or seizing accounts should be named. This opinion was expressed by Anatoliy Kinakh, President of the Ukrainian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, in a comment to UNN.
"Not so long ago, I had a meeting with the Prosecutor General on these issues (interaction between government officials, including tax authorities and business - ed.), and I personally suggested to him that since the names of corrupt officials are floating around on the Internet, we should know the names of officials who, by their actions to block tax invoices or unjustified opening of criminal cases, seizure of accounts , harm business. As they say, the state should know its heroes, and this responsibility should be mutual in a just state for which we are fighting," Kinakh said, agreeing that punishment for obstacles to business should be inevitable, and the names of those who harm the national economy should be known to the whole society.
Mr. Kinakh emphasized that in times of war, it is very important to create conditions for the sustainability of the national economy. And it is very important to preserve jobs in order to bring back people who have gone abroad.
He also reminded that in 2023 , Ukraine financed only 45% of its expenditures from its own economy .
He also emphasized that an ongoing dialog between government and business representatives is important in this regard. He noted that the UUIE is working in this area and and that some of their proposals have been taken into account by the tax authorities and , but not all of them.
A memorandum is expected to be signed soon between business representatives and the State Tax Service on cooperation, "on strengthening communication, on dialogue and working on the principle of not courageously fighting a problem when it arises, but overcoming these problems proactively.
Add
The European Business Association, which regularly evaluates the Tax Index, records 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 the Business Ombudsman Council's statistics , in the third quarter of 2023, 57% of complaints from business representatives concerned tax issues.
According to business ombudsman Roman Vashchuk, the problem in 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 these "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 an enterprise 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, because 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.
