The Ukrainian Business Council signed the appeal, the Ukrainian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the Council of Cities to Protect Individual Entrepreneurs, the Association of Private Employers, the NORT NGO, the National SME Platform, the All-Ukrainian Professional Association of Entrepreneurs, and the 4Business Business Association, NGO “Microbusiness of Volyn”, NGO “UO Mriya”, NGO “Center for Public Control”, educational initiative “The Last Capitalist”, NGO “Institute for Social and Economic Transformation”, NGO “Center for Social and Economic Research – CASE Ukraine”.
“We would like to draw the attention of the National Agency for the Prevention of Corruption to the fact that the text of the National Revenue Strategy contains a significant number of corruption factors that are directly mentioned in the Methodology for Conducting Anti-Corruption Expertise, which can have catastrophic consequences for both the private sector and the Ukrainian economy as a whole,” the statement says.
The authors of the appeal highlighted the following corruption-prone factors of the National Strategy: granting tax authorities access to bank secrecy; collection of tax debt without a court decision; introduction of pretexts for inspections of simplified taxation system entities; granting law enforcement functions to customs authorities; delegation of additional tax powers to local governments and expansion of powers of controlling authorities; and consolidation of the principle of presumption of guilt of taxpayers.
According to the appeal, the National Revenue Strategy needs not only partial revision but a complete rewrite and re-approval based on the principles of equality of controlling authorities and taxpayers before the law, the presumption of legitimacy of taxpayer decisions, guarantees of observance of the legal rights of taxpayers, as well as the establishment of clear safeguards to prevent any corruption and other abuses by tax and customs authorities. As reported, at the end of 2023, the government approved the National Revenue Strategy until 2030. This document will determine how the state will live for the next six years and finance its needs, reducing dependence on partners.
According to a statement by the Ukrainian Business Council, which includes 112 business associations from various sectors of the economy with 28,000 members, implementing some provisions of the National Strategy will negatively affect the country’s economic and investment climate and Ukraine’s economic recovery.
In April, the CASE Ukraine think tank (The Price of the State project) and the Last Capitalist educational initiative initiated a petition to revise the National Revenue Strategy for 2024-2030. The petition gathered the required votes in June, but the government rejected it.