Mykola Tomenko, the Deputy Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine deems it necessary to prevent the adoption of the norm of the Tax Code regarding the implementation of VAT on the books.
Thus, the draft Tax Code adopted by the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine contains the chapter with the register of goods and services exempt from VAT, though publishing if books, newspapers, magazines and even school textbooks, dictionaries and children books are not in the list. It is necessary to indicate that the Ukrainian publishers addressed the Government and the Prime Minster with the appeal to revise the principle of the Tax Code, where book publishing is deprived of the privileges. According to their words, it may cause the increase of the prices for the national book production and destroy small Ukrainian publishing houses.
The Deputy Chairman is convinced that it is not only ‘some wish of the publishers´, "it is the issue of the national matter, as the altering of the humanity policy in Ukraine in the course of the last year has already caused destructive results to the Ukrainian book." He explained that even under the conditions of the privileged tax system for the publishing houses of Ukraine, the quantity of the books published in Ukraine has been considerably reduced.
M. Tomenko is convinced that new Tax Code would cause a serious harm to the Ukrainian publishing business and first of all addressed the specialist working in the sphere of science and education with the appeal to occupy the common positions to save the Ukrainian book. "If the Tax Code is adopted in the existing variant, it will mean that we return to the periods when Ukrainian book shops sell only books published in the neighbouring states and Ukrainian books one would be able to find only in second-hand bookshop", M. Tomenko stressed.