Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych has said that the practice of requiring tax payments in advance is unacceptable and drew the attention of Ukrainian Prime Minister Mykola Azarov to the issue.
"Such cases [as the payment of taxes two months in advance], unfortunately, exist, and this has to be stopped. We should put an end to this practice, Mykola Yanovych [Azarov]. If we don’t do this in near future, we will have to eliminate this via surgery," he said during a meeting of the economic reform committee in Kyiv on March 21.
The president noted that the taxation agencies appeared to be not ready for implementation of some of the provisions of the Tax Code. In particular, Yanukovych mentioned queues at taxation agencies.
"The taxation agencies appeared to be unprepared to introduce monthly reports on taxes imposed on physical entities. Submission of these declarations resulted in confusion, [in turn] resulting in long queues at local taxation agencies, where employees are unable to give clear explanations to entrepreneurs about how to fill in the forms," the president said.
President Yanukovych ordered the drafting of a reform program on the activity of taxation and customs services within a month and the drawing up of all the necessary legislation.
In addition, the president said he was dissatisfied with work of the State Customs Service on bringing in revenues to the national budget.
"While the state taxation service completed the plan [on contributions to the general fund] by 104.2% at least on paper…the state customs service underpaid about UAH 600 million," Yanukovych said.
However, he said that in general the balance of contributions from these agencies was positive.
