The State Tax Service of Ukraine (STS) has uncovered evidence of a coordinated network of over 2,300 companies that effectively ceased to exist after conducting foreign economic transactions totaling over 198 billion UAH, reported Lesya Karnaukh, Acting Head of the STS.
“It took quite some time to uncover this scheme. Its participants are becoming increasingly inventive in their methods of concealing violations. To determine the riskiness of the transactions being conducted, we analyzed data sets using risk-based approaches… Such a concentration of management functions is atypical for real business and indicates signs of the organized use of such individuals as nominal managers,” she wrote on her Facebook page.
According to the agency head, the relevant data was obtained based on an analysis of information from the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) regarding violations of payment deadlines for the period from 2024 to the first quarter of 2026. The majority of transactions involved the export of goods: 1,243 companies carried out exports totaling over 176 billion UAH, while 555 companies conducted import transactions totaling over 18 billion UAH.
Lesya Karnaukh specified that 73% of the offending companies and 78% of the total volume of transactions are concentrated in seven regions: Odesa, Dnipropetrovsk, Lviv, Kharkiv, Kyiv, and Zaporizhzhia regions, as well as in Kyiv. Tax authorities recorded the mass re-registration of hundreds of companies under the same individuals, as well as the use of shared IP addresses and mass registration addresses in Kyiv and Lviv. In particular, seven individuals were identified, each of whom simultaneously serves as the director or founder of over 500 companies.
Based on data from the National Bank of Ukraine, tax authorities have already conducted audits and assessed over UAH 70 billion in penalties for violations of foreign exchange legislation in the field of foreign economic activity. The State Tax Service has forwarded all collected materials to the Office of the Prosecutor General for a legal assessment. Regarding 557 business entities, the agency has already prepared analytical conclusions indicating violations of the law and signs of money laundering.
The State Tax Service has fined the adult website PornHub $5.54 thousand for non-payment of the so-called “Google tax,” according to Danylo Hetmantsev, chairman of the parliamentary committee on finance, tax and customs policy.
“Unfortunately, not all taxpayers operating adult services are equally responsible for taxation. For example, the well-known Onlyfans service has already paid $944.1 thousand to the state budget of Ukraine since the beginning of 2023. At the same time, the company that operates the PornHub website evades registration, which resulted in a fine of $5543 and a corresponding tax notice (tax decision notice) sent to the company and the Canada Revenue Agency,” Hetmantsev wrote on Telegram.
He reminded that Ukraine is ranked 14th among other countries according to PornHub’s rating of electronic services viewed by consumers of the site.
A week earlier, the head of the committee said that in the third quarter of 2023, 96 declarations for EUR26.6 million and $29.9 million, or UAH 2.092 billion, were filed as part of the “Google tax”, while in the second quarter of 2023, EUR25.7 million and $27.7 million, or UAH 2.054 billion, were declared for payment.
Hetmantsev clarified that the largest amounts to the budget of Ukraine are paid by Google, Apple, Sony, Ebay, Amazon, Meta platforms and Netflix.
As reported, in 2021, the Verkhovna Rada passed a law on the “Google tax”, which proposes to equalize the taxation rules for international technology companies with those of Ukraine. In particular, it stipulates that international companies operating in the information space of Ukraine and earning money from online advertising will pay taxes in Ukraine, including VAT.
The State Tax Service carried out 186 actual inspections of filling stations, following which it imposed fines for UAH 83.4 million.
“In March this year, 186 actual inspections of filling stations were carried out, as a result of which UAH 83.4 million of fines were imposed. Also, 237,300 liters of fuel from illegal turnover for a total of UAH 5.4 million were seized,” the service said on its website.
As a result of the inspections, the tax office stopped the operation of ten filling stations and seized 40 units of equipment for UAH 4.8 million.
According to the service, among the main violations are trade in unaccounted excisable goods, transitions without the use of payment transactions recorders and sale of excisable goods without licenses. The tax authority also points to such violations regarding fuel storage as the lack of registration in the Unified State Register of flow meters and level meters of fuel in a place for which a license for storing fuel for the own needs or industrial processing has not been obtained.
