The results of the joint rating of the consulting company "PwC" and the World Bank Paying Taxes-2018 were presented in Kiev on November 21. The authors say that the improvement of positions was due to a decrease in the social contribution, as well as a number of innovations introduced during the last year.
The rating is based on the results of a survey of 190 countries. Last year, Ukraine occupied only the 84th place. Immediately there were statements of some experts who argue that this is a favorable time for the abolition of VAT.
To date, 137 countries levy a value added tax. Where he took root, the authorities, as a rule, do not think to themselves without it a profitable part of state budgets and are sure that VAT is a necessity and a budgetary benefit.
However, the United States and Japan do well without this tax. It is said that Bill Clinton once risked raising the question of entering VAT at the time of his presidency, but immediately received a cold-blooded response: American economists told him that in countries where VAT is in effect, the tax burden as a whole is almost 40% exceeds the similar indicator of those states where this tax is not applied.
Recall, for the first time VAT was introduced in 1958 in France. The appearance of VAT was a real breakthrough. The author of the tax was Maurice Lori - then head of the Directorate of Taxation of the Ministry of Economy, Finance and Industry of France. True, the famous German industrialist Wilhelm von Siemens proposed such an idea back in 1918.
The introduction of VAT solved the main problem of the classical turnover tax. It is absolutely neutral in relation to any productions and the number of turns, so only the added value is taxed. The final consumer pays the tax. As a rule, these are citizens or non-profit organizations and institutions.
According to Oleg Soskin, director of the Institute for the Transformation of Society, there were quite serious semi-colonial territories in France, such as the countries of northern Africa, in particular Algeria. From there went a lot of cheap money. They did not invest in the development of enterprises, but spent on the purchase of exquisite goods and jewelry.
Therefore, they introduced VAT, which stimulated production. But 70 years have passed since then. And today, for countries like Ukraine, it is not needed at all. We use it all the time as a corruption source of enrichment, as it is returned, say, to certain exporters, but not to all or certain corporations, and not all, "the analyst explained..
At the same time, not a single tax in Ukraine has succumbed to such devastating criticism as the value-added tax. He, they say, is both criminal and corrupt, and undermines the economy, because it reduces demand. It is clear that by itself no tax can be criminal or corrupt. It is done by officials like this - who is unprofessional, and who consciously.
In fact, value added tax is an improved type of turnover tax. At the dawn of the formation of our state, it really was needed. In Ukraine, indirect value added tax has been applied since 1992. Permanent expansion of functions required additional stable sources of budget replenishment.
The turnover tax, since the beginning of the last century, allowed many states of the world to solve this problem. In the Soviet Union, it was almost the main tax that formed the budget. At the same time, the problem with the classical turnover tax was that its rate could not be the same for different types of goods. The principle of the functioning of the turnover tax provided for the imposition of all sales and purchase transactions on the tax. However, with the development of production, more and more transformations and turns occurred with the same commodity. And at each stage the processed products had to be taxed from the turnover.
Consequently, the more turnover, the greater the tax in the price of the final product. As an example, iron ore. It is extracted, enriched, pellets are made, and from them - cast iron. Cast iron makes pipes that can become the end products. And they can become a component of the production of the machine and t. As a result of the development of industry and scientific and technological progress, the issuance of new types of products and the deepening of specialization, the classical turnover tax began to harm the economy. There was a need to develop new rates for various industries. Lobbying for the establishment of certain rates generated corruption among politicians and officials and distorted real competition. The return on capital began to depend not on the efficiency of the business, but on the will of officials. In addition, the turnover tax constrained the natural need to deepen specialization. And he also stimulated the creation of schemes for minimizing the payment of taxes.
When the VAT was declared in Ukraine, the declared goal was to contain inflation and increase consumption. Our legislators have tasted the worst examples from the taxation systems of different countries and have inflated the base, as nowhere else. Now the goal is recited another - filling the budget for social programs. It's in words. And in fact - a trough for distributors and a source of income for exporters, the lion's share of whose income to Ukraine if it gets, then only in the form of investments from offshore. It is known that indirect taxes are always socially unfair. Both the poor and the rich pay the same rate - 20%.
In Ukraine, value added tax was originally an important element of the taxation of enterprises. The base of taxation was the contractual value of the goods. The object of taxation was the operations for the supply of goods, works, services. Thus, in the territory of Ukraine all participants of economic transactions are simultaneously VAT payers.
Entrepreneurs are active payers registered in the bodies of the State Fiscal Service of Ukraine. Passive - all the rest. So, buying a sausage a person pays VAT in the cost of the goods, and the store is obliged to pay the amount of VAT received to the budget. But the store first bought sausage from the manufacturer and in the price of the purchase also paid this tax. The amount of VAT paid by the store is included in its tax credit, that is, the amount that the budget must return to it. But the store resold the sausage and in the cost of sales laid a new amount of VAT. From now on, he already has to pay VAT to the budget from the resale price, and this is already a tax liability. Having a tax credit store calculates it from the amount of the obligation and the balance will be the same amount that the store must pay to the budget.
For example, the store bought from the manufacturer a sausage for 12 hryvnia, of which two hryvnia - VAT. Two more hryvnia is the tax credit of the store. Further, the store sold sausage at 18 UAH per tonne. VAT - three hryvnia, which is a tax liability store. What is the amount of VAT payable to the budget of Ukraine? The calculation is based on the formula of the ND (tax obligation) - NC (tax credit) = SB (VAT amount payable / refundable). So, three hryvnia minus two hryvnia is equal to one hryvnia - this is the amount of the value-added tax that is payable to the budget.
If the loan amount exceeds the amount of the obligation, the right to recover VAT from the budget t arises. refund of tax on company accounts. This is a primitive interpretation of the value-added tax. In life, everything is more complicated.
We will add that both the tax credit and the tax liabilities are not included in the expenses and incomes of the payer of the value-added tax respectively. Its accounting is rather complicated, therefore it is conducted separately from the accounting of financial results of the enterprise's activity, which increases the costs of the enterprise. The smaller the enterprise and the lower its total turnover, subject to VAT, the greater the costs of the enterprise and the tax authorities. The receipts to the budget from such an enterprise are scanty. In addition, the lack of end-to-end tax inspections for the actual payment of VAT has generated unheard-of abuse, corruption and the misappropriation of budgetary funds. If someone has not transferred funds to the budget in a long chain of buyers, transferred them to cash or sent abroad, and the final seller of the goods, for example, the exporter, has the right to refund VAT, requires the return of money, the state will receive a net loss instead of income.
We must admit that during the years of independence as a result of such VAT transactions, thousands of Ukrainian officials and businessmen turned into rich. According to the acting head of the fiscal service, Miroslav Prodan, for seven months of 2017 the state refunded VAT to taxpayers amounting to 68 billion hryvnia. Of these, 60% or 41.4 billion hryvnias were paid in the last four months after the start of the work of the automatic VAT refund register.
The largest amount of VAT refunds was received by the agricultural holding Kernel-Trade (6.33 billion UAH), metro companies Azovstal (3.79 billion UAH), Arcelor Mittal Krivoy Rog (3.39 billion UAH), MMK im. Ilyich "(2.98 billion UAH) and" Dneprovsky metkombinat "(2.23 billion UAH). Zaporizhstal (UAH 2.07 billion), Suntrade (UAH 1.89 billion), Nibulon (UAH 1.84 billion), the State Food Grain Corporation (1.63 billion UAH), Zaporizhstal, , as well as agrarian company "ADM Trading Ukraine" (UAH 1.5 billion).
As experts say, the leader in the return of VAT on the agricultural market is the company "Kernel". The net profit of this company is about five billion hryvnia. They say that this happened due to the fact that since 2015, one of the owners of the agricultural holding was the people's deputy and former head of the tax committee Vitaly Homutynnik, who directly lobbies interests of his business. And it turns out that businessmen receive from the budget compensation for VAT, and consumers pay for everything, sometimes more than once.
If you take into account the VAT charged on the goods of state enterprises, the import of budget structures, as well as the cost of administering VAT on a countrywide scale, it is obvious that VAT is a way of redistributing social wealth from the broad masses of the population to the friends of the authorities.
The general director of the All-Ukrainian Association of Automobile Importers and Dealers Oleg Nazarenko emphasizes that Ukraine needs not to take the European system at home, but the American. The Americans do not have VAT, they say that this is a development tax. So we say that there are VAT offsetting, overpaid and it has returned, but in reality in Ukrainian realties it is beneficial for officials and fiscal officials - to manually return VAT. This returned, it is not. Just a lever of influence on enterprises. Moreover, he only returns to legal entities.
For example, the importer imported a car, paid VAT. You buy this car as an individual, do you pay VAT back? No, - the expert explained..
In addition, the second consecutive year in the draft budget there is no amount of planned VAT refund to exporters. This suggests that with this tax can be quite easy to play, because how much the state should compensate is unknown. In this regard, VAT is subject to devastating criticism, and is there an alternative to it?.
The drawbacks of the turnover tax are also obvious. A common proposal is to introduce VAT instead of VAT, citing US experience, but Ukraine is not America. First, you need to understand whether the sales tax can compensate for the budget losses from VAT cancellation.
The idea of ??refusing VAT and replacing it with another tax appears not for the first time. Back in 2005, the Ministry of Finance developed several tax replacement scenarios. But the main options for replacement, and then, and now there were two: consumption tax and sales tax.
The main argument in favor of the sales tax is the ease with which it is collected. After all, pay the tax should the final seller. But if the retailer intends to evade paying sales tax, the budget does not receive anything at all.
With VAT everything is more complicated. A retailer, buying products from a manufacturer or wholesale supplier, already pays VAT, which is included in the seller's price.
Carrying out costs related to the sale of his products, he also pays VAT in the price of costs, for example, by paying for electricity or fuel.
Thus, without even reflecting the retail sale of products, it partially paid VAT, and avoided paying only that part of the tax that was to arise, as the difference between a tax credit and a tax liability. That is, the real budget losses will be significantly lower.
It should also be noted that in the US, final consumption of households forms the bulk of GDP, while in Ukraine the share of consumption and its impact on GDP is several times less than in the United States. Therefore, the sales tax there allows you to provide a larger share of budget revenues than is possible in Ukraine. Conversely, in the US, the sales tax does not provide such a significant part of tax revenues to the state budget, as VAT in Ukraine. There, the rates of profit tax, personal income tax and property tax are significantly higher than in Ukraine. Offering VAT instead of VAT, in our country it is necessary, at least, to be ready to pay higher amounts for other taxes. It is unlikely that there are many people wishing to do this in Ukraine - even among agitators for the abolition of VAT.
The second option is the sales tax. Collecting sales tax, like sales tax, is much easier than VAT. Just need to take the percentage of the enterprise from the sales volume. But will it save the budget? If the tax rate is 2%, then the budget revenues will be 4.9% of GDP. At a rate of 7% - 16.8% of GDP, economists calculated. But the turnover tax rate of 7% is excessively high and simply unacceptable for the economy, they believe. If you put it at an acceptable level of 2%, the budget losses will be sensitive.
What is the solution? Ukraine will have to continue to tolerate the existence of VAT. Moreover, we now have a VAT rate of 20%, it is actually comparable with the EU. In Europe, the average rate of value added tax is 21.6%. Although in some countries - somewhat higher. In Poland, for example, 23%, in Denmark - 25%, in Hungary - 27%.
Add, Ukraine has signed an association agreement with the EU. Under its terms, we must harmonize the tax legislation in accordance with EU legislation. And this means that Ukraine has no right to simply refuse VAT and to replace it even with sales tax. This is prohibited by association agreement. But to make the VAT rate lower than in the EU - it is allowed. The best option to reduce VAT to 10%. Or at least up to 15%. At the same time, everyone understands that "kickbacks and drifts" to the tax remain, but the burden on business is decreasing.
It is not worth illusions that our economy will somehow magically become as powerful as it is in Germany or France tomorrow. We are a country with a developing economy. For the EU, a high VAT is their model of functioning. For Ukraine, another model is needed, more adapted to the current conditions of development.
That's really effective reform, experts say.. At the same time, business will increase its income, which it can direct to expand production, create new jobs, which in practice should lead to a real decrease in unemployment in Ukraine and a rise in wages.