Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada has approved at second reading bill No. 5368 liberalizing the Tax Code. A total of 240 lawmakers backed the document.
Head of the parliamentary committee for tax and customs policy Nina Yuzhanina said presenting the bill that the committee received 356 proposals for the second reading and 261 of them were voted down.
“Were we able to take into account everything related to liberalization of tax administration in this bill? We have not taken everything into consideration, and there are things to work on. Most of the requirements help to relax tax administration, cut corruption challenges in the fiscal area and create favorable tax environment”, she said.
A total of 13 amendments were initially rejected (12 of them were proposed by secretary of the tax committee Oleh Kryshin from People’s Front faction), but later the parliamentarians backed 12 amendments.
Yuzhanina said that the transfer of databases from the State Fiscal Service to the Finance Ministry, which was considered by the Finance Ministry as a key anti-corruption tool, was technically impossible: their independent audit would be carried out before July 1, 2016.
“We have received an objection from the IMF regarding the transfer of databases, as it is impossible to realize it technically”, she said. (Interfax/Business World Magazine)
