Participants of the Congress “Reform of the Public Finance System – the Way to Restore Ukraine” and business representatives have called on President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy to implement the tasks identified by leading think tanks and business associations as key priorities for this year.
According to a statement released on Friday by the Ukrainian Business Council (UBC), the key institutional reforms include the reboot of the BES and the State Customs Service with the election of the head in an open competition with the decisive vote of international partners, re-certification of employees during the year and approval of KPIs, as well as the establishment of market salaries for employees of the State Customs Service.
Another priority is the reboot of the State Tax Service on the same terms as the State Customs Service, including the creation of high-quality Public Control Councils and the introduction of an inclusive approach to the development of state policies and strategies.
“The work on the draft laws and their submission to the Verkhovna Rada should be preceded by an expert and public discussion of the relevant strategy and state policy. To improve the quality of the legislative process, it is necessary to provide for the mandatory submission of a regulatory impact analysis by all subjects of legislative initiative and the need for a certain minimum number of MPs-authors to register a draft law. Restrict the submission of alternative draft laws on the same issue to prevent legislative spam,” the statement reads.
Regarding the recovery, economic development and preservation of economic potential, the business asks to implement an optimal model of employee booking based on economic indicators, which allows for digital booking of a person liable for military service per day (e-booking), which will increase tax revenues to the budget, de-shadowing of wages and increasing the sustainability of all forms of business, including individual entrepreneurs.
In addition, the business asks to ensure an effective and transparent mechanism for business travel outside Ukraine for business trips for company executives, employees and individual entrepreneurs, as well as to implement systems to support and stimulate entrepreneurship in the areas of possible hostilities in the de-occupied communities.
Addressing the President and MPs, the business calls for preventing pressure from law enforcement agencies, as it leads to significant economic losses and disruption of state budget revenues. To this end, entrepreneurs recommend establishing the principle of presumption of innocence of the taxpayer (so that the body proves its guilt, not the taxpayer), concentrating the functions of pre-trial investigation of economic crimes exclusively in the BES, establishing personal responsibility of investigators (prosecutors and judges) for violations of the CPC and standards of prosecutors’ activities in the field of investment protection during pre-trial investigation, which have already been adopted and should become mandatory.
To reduce the pressure, the business also recommended automating the closure of criminal cases that have been “hanging” for years, providing the necessary safeguards for a quick and impartial pre-trial investigation, setting clear deadlines for pre-trial investigation in all criminal proceedings and judicial control over their observance, setting a deadline for returning seized property or lifting the arrest (10 days), and making the investigator liable for failure to comply with the court decision.
The business also proposes to introduce monthly reporting on criminal cases that have been under investigation for more than 6 months and the property seized (confiscated) in them by law enforcement agencies and to ensure the protection of the rights of participants in criminal proceedings (Draft Law No. 9211 as a basis, with amendments for the second reading).
As part of the reform of the tax system and customs legislation, the business community will ask to reduce the total tax burden on the payroll and replace the income tax with the tax on withdrawn capital after the end of martial law with the preparation of relevant legislative changes in advance, as well as to change the ideology of the SMKOR from “punitive” to analytical, to introduce a deadline for blocking tax invoices with an increase in the mandatory threshold for VAT registration.
The statement of the business associations emphasizes that it is necessary to ensure the preservation of the current simplified taxation system while minimizing its abuse, in particular: to define the criteria for distinguishing between employment and freelance by law. To do this, replace the broad fiscalization of sole proprietors of the 2nd and 3rd groups of the EH with the fiscalization of exclusively risky categories of taxpayers who are likely to reach the EH limits.
The business expects the guaranteed obligations regarding the conditions of doing business in the Diia.city tax regime to remain unchanged for 25 years and to ensure full automatic exchange of information with other countries, as well as to create an effective mechanism for automated comparison of documents on the customs value of goods.
With regard to reducing inefficient state budget expenditures, entrepreneurs are asking to review expenditures to optimize them, increase efficiency of their use, and adapt the amount of public spending to new demographic realities (this includes reducing expenditures on representative bodies of state power, the justice system, education, healthcare, and housing subsidies).
The business also expects the authorities to establish objective KPIs for all budget programs, publicly disclose budget estimates of budgetary institutions, and monitor the effectiveness of spending on government programs.
It is specified that the appeal was signed by 18 business associations, including: Association of Taxpayers of Ukraine, Association of Private Employers, IT-Ukraine Association, All-Ukrainian Agrarian Council, All-Ukrainian Professional Association of Entrepreneurs, SUP, Board, CLUB100, CEO Club, CFO Club, Kharkiv IT Cluster, Oil and Gas Association of Ukraine, CCI, Ukrainian Cluster Alliance, Ukrainian Security Industry Federation, UCAB, Ukrainian Association of Direct Sales, Ukrharchoprom.
The document was also signed by three coalitions of business associations – the USS, the Coalition of Business Communities for the Modernization of Ukraine, and the National Business Coalition.
