Internet services in Ukraine may become significantly more expensive from 1 October 2024. This is due to taxation incidents. This was reported by Nina Yuzhanina, a member of the European Solidarity faction and chairman of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Taxation and Customs Policy, Komersant ukrainskyi
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She noted that the State Tax Service of Ukraine wants to exclude internet providers from the simplified taxation system as early as 1 October 2024.
Earlier, during a roundtable discussion initiated by Oleh Kiper, chairman of the Odesa Regional Chamber of Commerce, entrepreneurs said that the transfer of telecoms providers from the simplified taxation system to the general taxation system could lead to a market collapse and a catastrophic deterioration in service.
According to the providers, they are required to switch to the general taxation system from 1 October, while many of them are currently individual entrepreneurs, i.e. single tax payers.
“Small companies operating in villages and towns will be forced to switch from the single tax and will have to hire an accountant and a lawyer, which means administration will become more complicated and costs will increase. “This will lead to the mass closure of individual entrepreneurs, and this niche will have to be filled by large companies that may not be interested in a particular region or not profitable to serve,” says Lyudmila Kokorovets, executive director of My Provider Group, “And if they do provide their services, they will have to pay different prices. This will result in people in Odesa paying about 300 hryvnias a month for the Internet, and somewhere in remote areas – 1300 or more.”
Yuzhanina appealed to the Ministry of Finance and the Tax Service to refrain from making a decision to cancel the single tax payer registration until this issue is legally resolved.
Yuzhanina also asks for immediate amendments to the Tax Code of Ukraine to bring the wording of the types of activities in the field of communications into line. The MP notes that the provisions of the Tax Code do not separate Internet providers as a separate group of taxpayers in the field of electronic communications who are entitled to the simplified taxation system.
At the same time, the ban on ISPs being single tax payers has been agreed with the Ministry of Finance, Yuzhanina said. Therefore, the tax service can only carry out explanatory work to inform taxpayers that they must refuse the simplified taxation system on their own and bring the Register of Single Tax Payers in line with the requirements of the law.
After all, there is no separate group for Internet providers, and the tax service cannot make such a decision on its own.
Thus, in the MP’s opinion, officials are neglecting the rule of law principle (Article 8 of the Constitution of Ukraine), according to which “everything that is not expressly prohibited by law is permitted”, and acting on the principle that only what is expressly defined by this law is permitted.