You're reading: Tax code protesters wake up in tent city

Several dozen tax code protesters spent the night sleeping on 5-inch thick Styrofoam slabs in five large army tents erected on Independence Square.

Driving winds and rain in the Kyiv kept most residents of the capital away from the square early on Nov. 23, a day after demonstrators delivered a list of their demands to the Presidential Administration.

Organizers of the nationwide protest said on Nov. 23 they will start collecting signatures calling to dissolve the current parliament. If President Viktor Yanukovych signs the code, they said they would organize new rallies in Kyiv and cities nationwide on Nov. 25.

A Kyiv court on Nov. 22 banned demonstrations on the square, but police have not moved in to evict the demonstrators.

One group of protest organizers have made four demands:

1. Veto the tax code.

2. Cancel the single social tax.

3. Cancel the pension fund tax for people paying a simple flat tax.

4. Dismissal of Prime Minister Mykola Azarov and deputy prime ministers Sergei Tigipko and Borys Kolesnykov.

The group said it would accept a higher single flat tax, but insists on eliminating social and pension fund taxes.

Another group of protest organizers representing trade union members made addition demands:

1. Pass a law, according to which the minimum living wage is determined by a National Council of social partnership managed by trade union leaders, employers and government authorities. Pensions should not be taxed.

2. Minimum pensions should be raised to the level of the minimum living wage.

3. Social and value-added taxes for those paying simple flat tax should be lowered.

4. A special section of the tax code providing a simplified system for calculating revenue and outlays for small business owners engaged in trade, construction, service industries and agriculture, should be drafted.

5. Ukraine’s oppressive tax-collecting state organ, the State Tax Administration, which is notoriously corrupt, must be reformed.

6. Immediate compliance with international obligations for transfering regulation of economic activities to self-governing entrepreneur associations.

7. The Cabinet of Ministers must be dismissed for authoring the tax code adopted on Nov. 18 by parliament.

8. Harassment of the organizers of nationwide protests against the new tax code must end.