International Journal of Accounting and Taxation

Presumptive Taxation in Ukraine Assessment of Previous and Current Systems from the Fiscal Perspective
Iryna Serbinenko

Abstract
From the business and individuals perspective taxes are burden. And from the governments perspective taxes are revenues. The constant conflict of interests has dramatic outcomes for every side. The main of them are shadow economy and corruption. These issues are very painful for developing and transition countries. Their tax legislation is deficient. That’s why in these countries taxpayers are vulnerable to different violations of tax administration. The other problem which is caused by deficient tax legislation is lack of understanding and predictability. That in turn is additional reason for decreasing of tax revenues and increasing of shadow economy. My thesis focuses on Ukrainian special tax regime for individual entrepreneurs (sole proprietors) and SMEs. Main objectives of simplified (presumptive) tax system for small taxpayers are: (i) to decrease the tax compliance costs and (ii) to increase the ability of tax authorities to concentrate on working with large and medium size companies. I argue that implementing of simplified (presumptive) tax system (STS) for sole proprietors and SMEs was necessary step for further development of Ukraine economy. My work is based on previous academic researches and on data from official sources. The main finding of my thesis is that both previous and current Ukraine’s STSs failed to achieve two main goals of special regimes for small taxpayers. I make a conclusion that a presumptive tax system is very important fiscal tool for developing countries but in order to be effective it has to be well designed and fully integrated into general tax regime.

Full Text: PDF     DOI: 10.15640/ijat.v4n2a5