Draft law No.3448 proposes:
- To determine that under the actual non-receipt of funds by budgets or state special-purpose funds (in Article 212 of the Criminal Code) and the actual non-receipt of funds by funds of mandatory state special-purpose insurance (in Article 212-1 of the Criminal Code) is considered the non-payment of exactly the coordinated monetary obligations. Thus, the moment has been specified from which emerges criminal responsibility for evasion of taxes and duties (mandatory payments);
- To increase two-fold the rate of the actual non-receipt by the budget of taxes, duties, unified social tax, from which the act is considered a criminal offense;
- To launch correspondence between controlling authorities and taxpayers, who file reports electronically, through electronic means;
- To foresee that monetary obligation is considered to be uncoordinated till the day of the entry into force of the court decision, provided that the claim was submitted to the court during 10 calendar days following the day of the receipt of tax notice - decision, or the day of completing the procedure of administrative appeal;
- To impose a ban on the transfer of documents of the audit to pre-trial investigation authorities, and the prosecutor's office till the expiry of the payment of the coordinated monetary obligation;
- To foresee that non-binding for the court is the judgment approving the agreement on the recognition of guilt regarding the criminal offenses under Articles 205, 212, 2121, 358, 366 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine;
- To clarify the responsibilities of the investigator when carrying out pre-trial investigation, the order of carrying out pre-trial investigation, court hearing and appeal in the cases on criminal offenses touching the evasion of taxes and duties (mandatory payments).
Corresponding amendments are proposed to the Tax, Criminal, Criminal Procedure, Economic Procedure, Civil Procedure Codes and the Code of Administrative Procedure of Ukraine.
Considering the presence of remarks to the draft law, submitted to the Committee, and its importance, the Committee has set up a working group for examining it and studying the proposals.
Following the meeting of the working group with the participation of people’s deputies, judges of the Supreme Court, the Supreme Administrative Court and other institutions, the Ministry of Finance, the State Fiscal Service and business, NGOs and Deputy Business Ombudsman of the Rada, on March 22, 2015, the members of the group came to a consensus on the expressed remarks, elaborated basic coordinated proposals concerning the draft project, which will be taken into account when preparing the draft law for the second reading.
During the discussion on the draft law at a meeting of the Committee the people’s deputies supported the draft law. They pointed to its importance in view of the current situation. Namely, according to official statistics, in 2015 they recorded 2,415 criminal proceedings under Article 212 of the Criminal Code, of which 85% of criminal proceedings were closed for lack of the event and / or of the components of a criminal offense, which indicates possible signs of abuse of office by the tax police in this area and unjustified pressure on taxpayers. Out of the above number of registered criminal proceedings only 180 were sent to the court with the bill of indictment. In 2015 the Court convicted persons in 52 criminal proceedings under Article 212 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, and declared not guilty persons in 25 proceedings. At that, 30 guilty verdicts were passed under Section 1, Article 212 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine.
The Committee members also stressed that according to official statistics, in 2015 the tax police uncovered loss in the amount of UAH 918.2 million under Article 212 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, of which refunded was UAH 520.7 million. The above data show extremely low quality of tax police’s fight with tax evasion.