Ukraine is preparing for another increase in taxes on labor and entrepreneurship, which has caused a wave of indignation among businessmen and ordinary citizens. Economist Oleksiy Kush claims that the new tax measures could have been less painful for the population if the government had turned to unpopular but effective solutions, such as taxing excess profits of banks and luxury goods.
What is better — UAH 57 billion or UAH 30 billion?
Watching how to count.
In the parliament, they want to push through a new draft law on taxes. Everything as before: an increase in the military levy from 1.5% to 5%. Plus 1% fee for FOPs of the third group. Well, there are also small things: collection from gas stations, etc.
But the battle for an additional 50% bank profit tax is starting again. Something like a tax on "incomes blown by the wind" - such were sometimes used in the West.
This tax can give UAH 27 billion, that is, almost as much as the increase in taxes on labor (military levy) and entrepreneurship.
And if you look at it from another angle, then by raising the tax on excess profits of banks, you can completely abandon additional taxes on salaries and small businesses.
But apparently not so.
The NBU and the Ministry of Finance were categorically AGAINST raising taxes on bank profits.
Moreover, they threatened to add a clause about the impossibility of such taxation to the memorandum with the IMF (then it will be submitted as a demand of the fund itself — a well-known practice of our government officials to camouflage their negative decisions under the demands of the IMF).
Imagine the level of cynicism, this higher level of unscrupulousness.
There is no money in the country, but there is excess profit of the banks, inflated at the expense of NBU subsidies in the amount of UAH 227 billion of interest on deposit certificates during the war. So this profit cannot even be taxed at a higher rate.
The return on capital in banks (ROE) is now more than 30%, and the NBU and the Ministry of Finance believe that if it is reduced to 15-20%, the banks will suffer greatly.
Do they think everyone is an idiot?
No one even thinks about other sources of filling the budget: they look for money not where it is, but where it is easier to take it.
What are the real sources?
For example, the introduction of a progressive income tax for individuals with high incomes (25% at the base rate of 18%).
Of course, we are not talking about the military. After all, even the NBU itself in its analysis noted the growth of the stratum of the rich in Ukraine during the war from 5% to 8%.
A progressive income tax would make it possible not to impose an increased military levy on the minimum wage for the poorest.
I am generally silent about such tax reserves as increased VAT on luxury goods, reduction of VAT refunds for the export of raw materials, and export duties on raw materials. In the country of raw materials, export duties bring... 500 million hryvnias per year, or the equivalent of 12 million dollars.
The reserves are very large there. Their involvement would make it possible to completely abandon the increase in taxes on the incomes of ordinary citizens.
But who needs them, these ordinary citizens?
The Ministry of Finance and the National Bank of Ukraine take care of the profits of banks, the IMF listens to what the Ministry of Finance and the National Bank of Ukraine have to say, and sanctifies what is said with its memoranda, which for the heads of these departments are more important than the Constitution.
In addition, it is much easier to extract taxes from ordinary citizens during the payment of salaries, especially from state employees. No one will even pay for some 5% there.
From the world by a thread - a rich shirt Briony..
