Restricting access to information about the tax debts of specific sole proprietors deprives Ukrainian businesses of one of the tools they use to vet potential business partners, according to Opendatabot CEO Alexei Ivanikin.
According to the service’s data, as of July 2026, approximately 1.5 million sole proprietors have tax debts, and the total amount of debt reaches 16.6 billion UAH.
However, since the start of the full-scale war, the State Tax Service has not published a public list of specific entrepreneurs in debt, even though data from the Unified State Register and general statistics on tax arrears remain publicly available.
“It is difficult to explain this restriction on security grounds: information about an individual entrepreneur’s tax debt does not contain any defense-related or strategically important details,” Ivanikin stated.
In his view, transparency of information has direct economic significance.
“When information about tax debt is public, entrepreneurs have an additional incentive to pay it off, as it affects their reputation and the choice of business partners. Since the start of the war, businesses have lost one of the tools for vetting counterparties and cannot see whether a potential partner is paying taxes,” noted the CEO of Opendatabot.
The number of entrepreneurs with tax arrears has increased approximately 2.3-fold since the start of the full-scale invasion—by 840,000 people—and the total amount of arrears has risen by 9.6 billion hryvnia.
In Ukraine, 1.5 million sole proprietors have tax debt, the total amount of which reached 16.6 billion UAH as of July 2026, according to data from the State Tax Service published by Opendatabot.
Since the beginning of 2026, the number of individual entrepreneurs with tax debt has increased by approximately 3%, while the total amount of debt has decreased by 300 million UAH.
On average, each individual entrepreneur with tax debt owes the state about 11,000 UAH in unpaid taxes.
In recent years, the number of entrepreneurs with tax debts has been growing by an average of about 16% annually.
Since the start of the full-scale war, the number of individual entrepreneurs in debt has more than doubled—by approximately 840,000 people—and the total amount of debt has increased by 9.6 billion hryvnias.
Thus, while at the start of the full-scale invasion, approximately 660,000 entrepreneurs had tax debts totaling about 7 billion UAH, by mid-2026 both figures had more than doubled.
Source: Opendatabot, based on data from the State Tax Service of Ukraine.
State-owned PrivatBank has launched a service in the “Privat24” app for filing single-tax payer returns for individual entrepreneurs (FOP) in the first through third groups, with the option to pay taxes afterward, the financial institution reported.
“Integrating electronic reporting into the mobile app will reduce the administrative burden on small businesses and minimize the risk of errors when filling out documents,” said Yevhen Zaigraev, a member of PrivatBank’s Management Board responsible for corporate business and small and medium-sized enterprises.
“Privat24” generates the tax return based on transactions in the entrepreneur’s bank accounts and calculates the income received. The sole proprietor must verify the data and sign the document using SmartID, after which it will be sent to the State Tax Service.
Once the tax service accepts the tax return, the entrepreneur can pay taxes within the app. The service is available in the “Tax Returns” section, where users can also view previously filed returns.
According to the bank, the number of active Privat24 users in the first quarter of 2026 increased by 2% compared to the same period last year—to 13.7 million—while the number of active business clients rose by 4%, to 952,000.
PrivatBank is Ukraine’s largest bank. According to the National Bank, the financial institution’s total assets as of June 1, 2026, amounted to 965.11 billion UAH (22.7% of the total).
The vast majority of sushi chains in Ukraine operate illegally, splitting into sole proprietorships (FOPs) to evade value-added tax (VAT), said Danylo Getmantsev, chairman of the parliamentary committee on finance, tax, and customs policy.
“Chains with billions in revenue in Ukraine do not legally exist at all and are completely fragmented into sole proprietorships. At the same time, these chains have state-of-the-art marketing and excellent websites through which they accept online orders and advertise their businesses. These chains claim to take a responsible stance, yet they do not pay taxes, which today go entirely toward the needs of the army,” the lawmaker emphasized in a YouTube video.
The committee chair stressed that the vast majority of sushi chains in Ukraine operate illegally, splitting themselves into individual entrepreneurs to evade value-added tax (VAT), despite having billions in revenue.
Getmantsev cited two examples of chains, including Osama Sushi, which has 170 locations in 91 cities. This chain is fragmented into 850 sole proprietorships operating under a simplified tax system. Last year, the company paid 1.4 million hryvnias to the state budget, and the year before that—139,000 hryvnias. At the same time, conscientious taxpayers in this industry, with a turnover four times smaller, pay 210 million hryvnias per year.
The lawmaker added that the losses to the state and local communities from the payment of salaries in envelopes within this network amount to 368 million hryvnias per year, since employees officially declare a salary of 8,000 hryvnias, while the industry average for a sushi chef is 44,500 hryvnias. Total annual losses from tax evasion by this chain are estimated at 1.5–2 billion hryvnias.
Another chain—SushiStory (formerly “Sushi Wok”), which currently has 54 locations in Ukraine—according to Getmantsev, employs 162 second-group individual entrepreneurs and three third-group individual entrepreneurs. The state’s losses from this brand’s operations amount to 272.5 million hryvnia per year.
The committee chair emphasized that the sushi market can be operated entirely “above board,” since there are companies in Ukraine that operate under a single legal entity and pay VAT.
Getmantsev reported that, along with the collected evidence, receipts, and photographic documentation, he has already officially appealed to the Economic Security Bureau (ESB) and the State Tax Service (STS) to conduct audits, and he also called on restaurant owners to stop the practice of “fragmenting” their businesses.
