On April 9, 2015 at the Premier Palace Hotel (Kyiv) took place the second annual International Tax Forum, organized by the newspaper “Legal Practice” with the support of the Tax Advisors Association. The General Partner of the Forum was International Legal Center EUCON.
The first most relevant topic for discussion with top-ranked officials was the tax reform, namely the fact that such reform should be started with the reform of the supervisory authority – State Fiscal Service of Ukraine. Olena Makeeva, Deputy Minister of Finance of Ukraine, Andriy Zhurzhiy, First Deputy Chairman of the Committee on Taxation and Customs Policy of Verkhovna Rada, Yaroslav Romanchuk, President of the Tax Advisors Association, managing partner of International Legal Center EUCON took part in a panel discussion.
As a part of the structural reform Yaroslav Romanchuk proposed to liquidate the State Fiscal Service of Ukraine, and set up structural subdivisions in the form of individual departments by the Ministry of Finance. ‘In this case the Ministry of Finance will be responsible to control both revenues and expenses. Currently many functions are duplicated by district and regional offices of the SFS, therefore I propose to liquidate the district inspection and to create “front-offices” on providing services and consultations to taxpayers. The establishment of a Financial Guard, separate subdivision within the tax police, departments of Ministry of Internal Affairs and SSU which are responsible for economic crimes and will be subordinated to the Ministry of Finance or even better to the Ministry of Justice will be crucial. In this case, we can effectively optimize the structure of tax, customs and law enforcement officials dealing with economic crime investigation’- said Mr. Romanchuk.
Olena Makeeva informed that the government does not plan to introduce major changes in tax legislation in the near future. But at the same time, the Ministry of Finance in conjunction with the National Council of Reforms undertook to prepare proposals for tax reform till the end of August, which will be put into effect next year.
Andriy Zhurzhiy focused on the fact that firstly it is necessary to implement the changes that will be experienced immediately by taxpayers. This is just because the reforms which require legislative changes will be actually implemented no earlier than within a year.
The Forum was also attended by representatives of the State Fiscal Service of Ukraine.
Within the discussion on the implementation of the tax compromise, Evgeny Petrenko, Head of Criminal Law and Procedure of the International Legal Center EUCON define the criteria that need to be considered by business when deciding whether to strike a compromise with government or refrain from doing so.
During the last section of the Forum, participants discussed the mechanisms concerning protection of assets from tax audits and criminal prosecution.
