Oleksiy Lyubchenko: Taxpayers pay taxes, we simply control the timeliness and completeness of payment

Concept of “the Tax service collected” or “the Customs service collected” is a completely archaic rhetoric. Taxpayers pay taxes and the Tax service simply controls the timeliness and completeness of payment. This was stated by Chairman of the STS Oleksiy Lyubchenko in an interview with “Novoe Vremya”.

“There is a concept of “tax efficiency” and we have always worked on it. This is a relationship between paid taxes and the tax base. It is not interesting to think in terms of “quarter” or “year”. We took ten years, calculated Ukraine by one algorithm and got an interesting picture” – stated Oleksiy Lyubchenko. 

According to him, starting from 2016 (the first full year of operation of the electronic VAT administration system) the tax efficiency began to increase gradually. These ratios range from 0.1% and above.

“If the tax base is 700 billion UAH and 700 million UAH has been paid, the coefficient is 0.1%. The efficiency reached 2.7% in April 2019. Starting from May 2020, the tax efficiency averages more than 3.1%” – emphasized Oleksiy Lyubchenko.   

He also noted that the value added tax revenues growth is due, particularly to the blocking of opportunities for taxpayers to operate companies that “regularly compete in the market with cheap VAT rates of 8% or 10% depending on the situation”.

“There has been an absence of such opportunities for six months now. About 20 billion UAH with a plus for 5 months has become an increase comparing to 2019. If the tax efficiency were the same as last year, there would be no such 20 billion UAH of the VAT. The same situation is now – at least 2.5 billion UAH of the VAT will be another plus in October 2020. About 24 billion UAH appeared due to the fact that everyone began to pay tax at a 20% rate.” – outlined Chairman of the STS.