The new tax code takes the single tax away from online stores!

So as not to repeat what’s been said, I’ll quote e-commerce.com.ua:

… accord­ing to the draft of the new Tax Code of Ukraine, pub­lished on the web­site of the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s par­lia­ment, on June 15 this year (Section XIV, “Special tax regimes”, Art. 2.2), the sim­pli­fied tax system (the single tax, Ukraine’s sim­pli­fied tax for small busi­nesses) does not apply to busi­ness enti­ties, both legal enti­ties and indi­vid­ual entre­pre­neurs, engaged in:

• whole­sale and retail trade over the Internet;
• pro­vid­ing the ser­vices of Internet providers;
• activ­i­ties in the field of informatization;
• pro­vid­ing access to the Internet.

When they hear “online stores” up there, they appar­ently think only of Rozetka, the big online elec­tron­ics store, and its like. But that’s exactly the point: Rozetka is an LLC anyway, as far as I know, and this won’t affect them. Somebody has to make them under­stand that online stores in Ukraine are mostly very small busi­nesses in their infancy, and the “Rozetkas” can be counted on the fin­gers of one hand.

This sen­tence in one of the drafts of the Tax Code explains every­thing, in my opinion:

It is unac­cept­able that the sim­pli­fied tax system, for the pur­pose of min­i­miz­ing tax pay­ments, is used in types of activ­ity that by their nature can be regarded as “super-profitable”, while in some cases cer­tain types of activ­ity require no cap­i­tal invest­ment or mate­r­ial costs to create the prod­ucts sold to con­sumers (that is, the income received is passive).

Online stores have been classed as “super-profitable”.

The Association of E-Business Participants of Ukraine isn’t stir­ring at all over this, for some reason. Apparently it hasn’t yet taken shape as a work­ing organization. Though it could have got itself some PR by stand­ing up for online stores.

What to do?

1. I don’t know.
2. Sign the “Appeal of Ukraine’s small and medium business associations regarding the significant worsening of conditions for doing business in the country”.
3. Unite and make more noise.
4. kodeksu.net (“no to the code”).
5. Someone wrote a letter to Oleksandra Kuzhel; she replied, more or less, that it wasn’t at all clear what the deal was with these online stores, and asked for expla­na­tions and argu­ments… More on the forum of the newspaper Chastny Predprinimatel (“Private entrepreneur”) (the site is down at the moment, for some reason).

P.S. And here’s a little some­thing for dessert:

(Image lost: a screen­shot of V. F. Yanukovych’s elec­tion pro­gram from the web­site of the Central Election Commission, http://www.cvk.gov.ua/; the image linked to the program’s page.)

Where are our tax hol­i­days??? I think now is just the time to ask that question!

Update, July 11, 00:52

The Verkhovna Rada has decided to put the draft Tax Code to a nationwide discussion