On Friday, in the course of the briefing on the formation of the State Budget of Ukraine that was held by the Committee on Freedom of Speech and Information, Mykola Tomenko, the Deputy Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine declared that the representative of the President in the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine confirmed that there is a plan to increase the tax rate on the advertising as an initiative on State Budget 2010 funds increase.
As it is known, there is a discussion in mass media regarding the information on the possible crucial changes in the conditions of the economic activity of the mass media in Ukraine. On particular it concerns the amendments to the Decree of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine "On Local Taxes and Charges" according to which the tax rates on advertising is to be immensely increases and introduce new object of the taxation "publishing (making public) on any information on name of sponsor, trademark and services of the external advertisements in 10 times, for the television advertising in 42 ties and for the published mass media in 30 times.
"All the attempts to find the author of this ‘genius´ idea in Ministry on Finance, Economics or in Government in general remained unsuccessful. Instead the dignitaries prove that such an increase is planned", he stated.
According to M. Tomenko, it is obvious that if such tax is implemented, in order to save the national television industry, mass media needs either transference to the shadow advertising activity or close all the national television projects and broadcast copies of American of Russian soap operas. "Regional channels under such conditions would be not able even to exist at all", M. Tomenko stated.