There are fewer risky enterprises, but questions to the State Tax Service remain
21 February 2025 11:35
Overall, since the beginning of the year, the number of blocked invoices has decreased to 0.44%, and almost 9,000 companies have been removed from the list of risky ones. Ruslan Kravchenko, the head of the State Tax Service, provided such data during a meeting with representatives of business, business associations and public organizations in Lviv region, "Komersant Ukrainian" reports.
He said that today the State Tax Service has 29 consulting centers that provide comprehensive assistance to taxpayers in unblocking tax invoices and removing enterprises from the risk category.
Also, according to Ruslan Kravchenko, in order to systematically solve the problems, the tax authorities are already developing a package of changes to improve the efficiency of the risk assessment criteria monitoring system (RACS).
What questions remain
People’s Deputy Nina Yuzhanina recently sent a parliamentary appeal to the State Tax Service and received information on certain issues of the RMCS in December 2024 and tried to analyze the state of affairs for the year as a whole.
She reported that in 2024, the number of VAT payers in Ukraine decreased by 3.3 thousand and as of January 1, 2025, amounted to 248 thousand payers, while the number of legal entities decreased by almost 4 thousand over the year, while the number of individual entrepreneurs paying VAT increased by 800. In 2023, the number of VAT payers decreased by 10 thousand, so, as Nina Yuzhanina summarized, the rate of decline in the number of VAT payers slowed down in 2024.
Risky VAT payers
At the beginning of 2024, 29.5 thousand taxpayers were on the list of risky taxpayers, and by the end of the year their number decreased by 1.7 thousand.
11,000 taxpayers were excluded from the risky list by the decision of the commissions, and almost 700 by a court decision.
More than 16 thousand taxpayers received a decision on the taxpayer’s compliance with the risk criteria.
Only 280 taxpayers, or 1.8% of those taxpayers who were determined to be risky, appealed the decision on the taxpayer’s riskiness in an administrative procedure, and 175 taxpayers were excluded from the list of risky taxpayers.
Nina Yuzhanina draws attention to the fact that in 2024, more taxpayers were excluded from the list of risky taxpayers by a court decision 4‼️ than by administrative appeal!
Hence the question: “why does the administrative appeal procedure in the State Tax Service regarding decisions on the riskiness of a payer not work?”
Regarding the blocking of TI / SA
In 2024, on average, the tax authorities blocked the registration of TI/CCs for 24 thousand taxpayers per month, or 15% of those who submitted TI/CCs for registration.
In total, 2.33 million TI/CCs were blocked in 2024, and the total amount of blocked VAT amounted to almost UAH 54 billion, while taxpayers later proved – through the STS commissions and courts – the right to register 1.75 million TI/CCs (71% of blocked TI/CCs) for the amount of VAT of almost UAH 40 billion (74% of the blocked VAT amount).
94% of the taxpayers who submitted documents for unblocking 1.75 million TI / SA, the commission unblocked 1.66 million TI / SA, or 95%.
Nina Yuzhanina also analyzed the economic feasibility of blocking TI/CC in 2024 in hryvnias, and it looks like this
– uAH 2,744 billion worth of TI/CCs have been submitted for registration in the URTI,
– uAH 54 billion worth of TI/CCs were blocked,
– uAH 40 billion were unblocked.
That is, in 2024, out of UAH 2,744 billion, UAH 14 billion, or 0.5% of the total VAT amount, was actually blocked.
And then the MP asked another question: “Doesn’t the tax office with SMKOR remind you of Don Quixote, who fought against windmills?”
“You may say that UAH 14 billion is a lot of money. Yes, but let me remind you that thanks to the SEA VAT, all VAT has already been paid,” the MP states.
What about the system of suspension of tax invoices
According to Nina Yuzhanina, at each iteration of the SSTS, the rights of taxpayers are violated, and none of the tax authorities has yet been held accountable for the problems created for business.
“And who has calculated how much tax the budget has not received due to the complete or partial suspension of economic activity of business entities?” asks the MP.
According to her, it is good that the new Head of the State Tax Service has undertaken to help businesses with the unjustified blocking of TI/CC and the classification of taxpayers as risky, but it is also sad, because there should be “not a role of an individual in history,” but systemic certainty.
Therefore, she has a few more questions:
“Will the Procedure for Suspension of TI/CC Registration in the Unified Register of Tax Invoices (No. 1165) change?
Will the State Tax Service propose the necessary changes?
Will the Ministry of Finance agree or support them in order to bring the provisions of the Procedure in line with the Tax Code?”
