Participants of the meeting were people's deputies, representatives of diplomatic institutions and international organizations.

Chairperson of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Taxation and Customs Policy Nina Yuzhanina said the draft law No. 3357 had been elaborated by representatives of all parliamentary political forces.

Nina Yuzhanina reminded that ambitious plans to hold tax reform were envisioned by the Coalition Agreement between deputy factions. However, complicated conditions entailed by the Russia's aggression and negative economic situation were the obstacle on Ukraine's way to embodiment of the plans.

According to the Chairperson of the Committee, the state budget for 2015 envisioned only minor amendments, some of which had new taxes as a result of raise of tax burden: military fee, local 5-percent excise fee, raise of rents, which led to growth of administrative burden (related to payment of taxes) on the business.

"Therefore, most of the elements of the tax reform envisioned by the Coalition Agreement, in particular, decrease of time and funds of taxpayers for calculation and payment of taxes, expansion of unhampered remote provision of financial statements and tax payment, termination of punitive model of tax control have not found practical implementation, and, which is the most important, that entailed considerable public uproar and justified criticism of experts and business representatives.

Thus, according to our invincible belief, the major challenge of the further promotion of reforms in Ukraine is still full implementation of such strategic documents, the Association Agreement between Ukraine and the European Union, the Program of the President of Ukraine, and the Coalition Agreement," the Chairperson of the Committee said.

In the course of the presentation, its participants also noted that the offered draft tax reform symbolically called "Tax reform of 2016. Fiscal liberalization" was elaborated as a result of consolidation of deputies and representatives of the Ukrainian business to satisfy demands of the civilized world and Ukrainian society for decisive steps in fight against corruption in the tax sector. Disbandment of the tax police, decrease of administrative pressure through modernization of the fiscal service, introduction of modern e-services are expected to be the first phase of the tax reform.

The participants of the presentation said the draft law offers to tackle the most hot-button issues the business faces, inter alia the problem of VAT refund, to create conditions for revival of country's economy, to deshadow Ukraine's economy through setting fair tax rates, introduction of control over transfer pricing.

"This is exactly the tax reform that will allow our country to effectively settle the issues of state debt and adhere to international debt obligations," Yuzhanina said.

One of the co-authors/people's deputy Tetiana Ostrikova informed about major innovations of the draft law. In particular, she noted that in compliance with all analytical researches, the tax reform of Ukraine does not have drastic differences from the global practice. She said the major problems are not in the tax rates, but in procedures of their administration.

"When we met with representatives of the IMF, they called on us not to lower the tax rates, and instead fight corruption first. Everybody understands that full-scale reformation of the fiscal service must finally take place. Thus, the draft law envisions legislative grounds to reform the State Fiscal Service into a service friendly to taxpayers," Ostrikova noted.

The people's deputy drew attention to the fact that the largest number of contacts between taxpayers and tax bodies take place at the lowest level — the level of district inspectorates. Thus, the draft law offers to terminate district inspectorates' functions to provide tax audit and hold inspections leaving only their servicing functions. In her words it would combat corruption.

Ostrikova said that another important innovation in the draft law was the setting of the number of employees of the fiscal service at the level of the law.

She also informed that the draft law offers to demilitarize tax bodies, disband tax police and create new body under the Ministry of Finance — the Financial Investigations Service.

An important change is the fact that the State Fiscal Service has to act in the frames of procedures of acts and instructions provided by the Ministry of Finance. Going beyond those rules and procedures is considered to be abuse of office. The State Fiscal Service will not be able to provide regulatory-legal acts. The issue of planning of forms and methods of tax control, adoption of the plan of inspections would also be handed over to the Ministry of Finance.

In compliance with the draft law, the fiscal service will check only taxpayers included to the plan by the Ministry of Finance, which would take respective decisions on the basis of deep analysis of data in the information-analytical bases. Thus, the system of determination of tax risks would be launched exactly in the Ministry of Finance.

To decrease the number of cases of direct contact between taxpayers and employees of tax bodies it is offered to introduce non-contact online service entitled "Taxpayer's e-office." It will enable taxpayers to manage their personal account, control the state of settlements with the budget, receive certificates, etc.

Besides, it is offered to significantly simplify the procedure of appeals, establish the tax consultants institution using the best experience of Poland and Germany.

Ostrikova informed about offered rates of major taxes aimed at overcoming negative manifestations of corruption, first of all the ones touching the VAT refund; at termination of special VAT taxation regime for agricultural enterprises, except for animal-breeding.

The draft law offers introduction of public register of applications, a switch to distributed profit etc.

The Chairperson of the Committee Yuzhanina said the offered tax reform would lower tax revenues to the state budget by UAH 200 billion.

She noted that the revenues were calculated basing on figures envisioned by the Ministry of Finance — not more that 16-percent inflation. "We have not invented anything new, however, calculated it correctly. No new taxes and own calculations of inflation have been made. We only recalculated the figure and it lowers the amount of UAH 200 billion by UAH 143 billion," Yuzhanina explained.

The Chairperson of the Committee also informed about a meeting with representatives of the IMF to provide them with the calculations. She said it is expected that in November, the IMF mission will work in Ukraine. The authors of the draft law would like to hear their answer whether they support these calculations.

The participants of the presentation drew attention to the importance of cooperation between people's deputies and the Government, in particular, taking in account the fact that this issue was very important for the IMF program and for further assistance to Ukraine.

Yuzhanina said: "We would be glad to constructively work with the Ministry of Finance. However, the work has somewhat slowed down as we have absolutely different vision of necessity for liberal reform. The vision is the following: the Ministry of Finance says that the liberal reform should be introduced gradually, however, at that, they offered raise of tax burden touching some taxes in their concept. That means we understand the liberalization in different ways."