Round table on Draft Law No. 7518

February 26, 2018

The round table of the UAA on “Draft Law No. 7518 as a pledge of launching the Temporary register and budget reimbursement of the “old” periods” was held on February 22, 2018 at the press center of the Information Agency LIGABusinessInform.

During the event it was highlighted, that despite the fact, that the Temporary register of applications for refunds of VAT budget reimbursement filed before January 01, 2016 is foreseen by the Tax Code of Ukraine, but has not been formed yet and doesn’t operate by now (it had to be formed up to February 01, 2017). Thereby, for almost a year the Ukrainian companies deprived of the opportunity to return the “old” sums of VAT budget reimbursement. The round table was started with the speech of Antonina Gorodetska, the Chairman of the Tax Committee of the UAA.

Anna Sankina, the GR Manager of CHS, noted that the problem of reimbursement is the actual issue for business and it is critical to provide the real launch of the Temporary register. Besides, Anna specified that this Draft Law is essential as demonstration of the state’s intentions, since the debt is unacceptable for the state with the European values.

Inna Taptunova, Partner at , emphasized on the important issue, which disturbs the taxpayers: whether the sums of budget reimbursement paid by the taxpayers are already included in the Temporary register, or they will be included later, whether the taxpayer’s applications are entered into the Temporary register or not. Besides Inna disclosed her opinion concerning the available funds in the state budget for the purpose of reimbursement, operating principle of the permanent and temporary register, implementation of further steps on reimbursement, which are provided in the Draft Law.

Alexander Minin, Senior Partner at , Attorney at Law, noted, that business needs real money, namely the reimbursement. Though the legislation makes any obstacles for formation of the Temporary register, the failure to create the Temporary register impedes implementation of VAT reimbursement, in particular by means of offset of amounts to be reimbursed against current tax liabilities. The key is to make the state really solve this issue, because it has passed more than a year since reimbursement of the “old VAT” has been actually blocked. Moreover, Alexander touched up the attempt (Draft Law) made in summer 2017 aimed to refuse from such VAT reimbursement by means of real money in favor of bonds, i.e. to change “rules of the game” again. “The present Draft Law at least will not make the current situation worse. We hope it will work for unblocking of the process, this is what the business is expecting from this Draft Law”, – commented Mr. Minin.

Vitalii Nakonechnyi, Advising Assistant of the Deputy Andrii Zhurzhii, has deliberately examined the story of this issue and commented on the provisions of the Draft Law. He assumes that the Draft Law itself will not solve the issue of the Temporary register operation, because the main problem is that nobody follows the law and the primary target is to require the execution of law provisions that already exist by the state authorities.

Oksana Shvets, representative of the American Chamber of Commerce, noted that the Draft Law No. 7518 may become the tool of actual unblocking of VAT budget reimbursement for the previous periods and therefore the companies-members of the Chamber support it.

The video record of the round table is available by the link.