Law on Reducing Tax Burden on Business Has Been Signed

On Friday, 7 August 2015 the President signed the Law No. 655-VIII on amendment of the Tax Code with respect to reducing the tax burden on taxpayers (the Draft Law No.2004) adopted by the Parliament on 17 July of the same year.

From now on, the authority to release generalized tax consultations shall be vested on the Ministry of Finance as a central body of executive authority that ensures development of state policy in the financial sphere. Generalized tax consultations shall be made publicly available through the official website of the Ministry.

All provisions relating to determination of the taxpayer's tax liability in the event of conviction or termination of the criminal case on non-rehabilitating grounds shall be removed from the Tax Code.

The Law shall prohibit controlling authorities and other governmental bodies from using tax audit acts as basis for forming conclusions as regards relations between taxpayers and their counterparts if tax decision notice has not been served to a taxpayer upon the issuance of such tax audit act.

The Law shall set out general procedure for making tax decision notices by the controlling bodies in cases where criminal proceedings are pending.

Terms and procedure for granting access to officers of controlling bodies to conduct documentary on-site and actual tax audits were refined as well.

Temporarily( until 31 December 2016 inclusive) penalties that accrued on the amount of tax liability paid without appealing the tax decision notice shall be waived for the taxpayers with income or volume of transactions up to 20 million UAH. Accordingly, accrued penalties shall be cancelled within 10 days from the date on which the tax liability was paid.

Taxpayers shall be allowed not to accrue late interest payments during self-calculation of the amount of their monetary obligations within 90 days following the last day of the deadline for payment of the liability.