Following the proposal of the
Ministry of Finance, the Government has approved draft laws meant to implement
the IMF’s recommendations regarding the reform of the State Fiscal Service
(SFS).
The Ministry of Finance is
actively working to implement institutional changes regarding the State Fiscal
Service which would significantly improve the quality of public services for
citizens and business and help remove biased approach and corruption opportunities
in the operations of the tax and customs authorities.
Pursuing this target, the
Ministry of Finance has been reforming the SFS since June 2015. This reform was
agreed with the IMF and approved by the Government; the reform is actually a
route map for the reform strategy of the SFS for the next two years.
One of steps envisaged under
the reform is to establish regional SFS units with the respective local customs
offices and tax inspections reporting to them. That would allow to optimize the
local SFS units and to reduce the number of its employees (draft Law of Ukraine
No. 2177a “On amendments to the Customs Code of Ukraine regarding the
optimization of the local units of the State Fiscal Service”).
One more draft law approved by
the Government is aimed to simplify the procedure for filing administrative
protests by taxpayers regarding their tax liabilities by introducing a
one-level processing system. According to this, these protests will have to be
handled by the central SFS office only, which shall simplify and speed up the
processing of taxpayers’ claims (draft Law of Ukraine No. 2178а “On amendments to the Tax Code of Ukraine aimed to
minimize influence of budget revenue administration”).
Also, it was decided to
increase the number of deputy heads for some of the state bodies based on their
functions. In line with the IMF’s recommendations and with the purpose of
implementing institutional changes in the SFS operations, five functional areas
in the SFS operations were defined which must be assigned to the same number of
deputy heads of the SFS (draft Law of Ukraine No. 2176a “On amendments to
article 19 of the Law of Ukraine “On central bodies of executive power”
regarding deputy heads of central bodies of executive power”).
Thus, these draft laws shall
contribute to transforming the SFS from a controlling authority to a
service-oriented public body as well as to implementing requirements related to
the cooperation with the IMF.
The draft laws approved by the
Cabinet of Ministers were withdrawn from the Parliament due to the change of
the Government and will be re-submitted to the MPs after their approval by the
new Government.
The Ministry of Finance
expects the Parliament to support the above draft laws.
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