By blocking tax invoices, Hetmantsev is working for the enemy, killing Ukraine's economy - expert

Thanks to the scheme of blocking tax invoices created by Danylo Hetmantsev, chairman of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Finance, Taxation and Customs Policy , he is working for the Russian enemy and killing Ukraine's economy. This opinion was expressed in an exclusive commentary to UNN by political strategist Serhiy Gaidai.

"The blocking of tax invoices is a huge corruption scheme created by Mr. Hetmantsev and thanks to which he is working for the Russian enemy, killing the Ukrainian economy, which we really need. Because we need money for weapons. In general, we need an economy for the country to live and work, and he is killing it. Because the caste of several tens of thousands of tax officers must live and exist on something," Gaidai said.

According to him, the tax authorities may be replaced by an algorithm that will automatically collect tax from individual entrepreneurs' accounts every time. 

Gaidai added that Ukraine needs to keep government institutions away from inspecting businesses during the war as much as possible. In addition, according to him, it is necessary to reduce the staff of tax and customs officers as much as possible and entrust tax activities, for example, to the banking sector. The expert added that such taxation could be carried out with the help of artificial intelligence algorithms, which operate, in particular, in mobile applications. 

"We don't need to ask any advice from any European business associations here, we need to decide for ourselves how long we will tolerate security forces, tax and customs officials who are destroying our economy and our businesses," said Gaidai.

Add

The European Business Association (EBA) notes the aggravation of the situation with the blocking of tax invoices since the end of February. It suggested that instead of freezing business activities by blocking them, the State Tax Service should conduct tax  audits in case of questions about the activities of companies. The EBA emphasized that the tax legislation of the EU countries does not contain provisions on blocking tax invoices.

Recall

Blocking of tax invoices is one of the main problems that Ukrainian entrepreneurs complain about in the field of tax administration. In general, according to the Business Ombudsman Council's statistics  , 57% of complaints from business representatives in the third quarter of 2023 concerned tax issues.

As noted by business ombudsman Roman Vashchuk in an interview , the problem for business is not even the level of taxes, but the style of administration. He also added that tax and customs lose 90-94% of their cases in courts, either in the first instance or on appeal to the Supreme Court.

According to experts, this situation with the courts indicates that the tax authorities are abusing their powers, as the courts are breaking down these decisions. Some, such as economic analyst Pavlo Sebastianovych, directly calls these "schemes".

Among the main such schemes, he names fictitious exports, registration of fictitious VAT from fictitious companies, export of goods under fictitious documents with fictitious VAT and refund of real VAT, twists, blocking tax invoices, granting risky status to an enterprise and organizing shadow schemes to remove this status.

Dmytro Oleksiyenko, a member of the Taxpayers Association Board, believes that MP Danylo Hetmantsev, chairman of the Verkhovna Rada Tax Committee, is behind this administration policy, because no important decisions are made at the State Tax Service without his knowledge. And he actually manages the tax office through his former assistant Yevhen Sokur.

At the same time, Mr. Hetmantsev called his activities in relation to the tax service "parliamentary control." He also rejected accusations that he was taking over the powers of the executive branch, saying that he was simply helping entrepreneurs.