Following the announcement on Tuesday that the President is “vetoing” the Tax Code but will sign it on Thursday if certain unspecified requirements are met, the Ukrainian Association of Press Publishers has issued a call to all journalists and publishers. They call on them to provide maximum coverage of the process of amending and supplementing the Tax Code, as well as discussion of the positive and negative impact of the Code’s adoption.

The statement points out that at present there is no open source with the final version of the Tax Code and the publishing community cannot fully assess its impact in their field.

If it is passed in the version presently posted on the Verkhovna Rada website, press publishers and journalists will be in an extremely different position.

Journalists, photographers, designers and others engaged in business will be unable to sell their works and services to publishers since businesses are prohibited from counting as expenditure the purchase of goods, work and services, as well as other material and non-material assets from an individual business person paying the single tax.

They will not be able to buy authors’ rights (articles, photos, etc) from foreign companies or authors since they will be prohibited from counting in their expenditure the cost of such rights purchased from non-residents.

Retail press vendors will have to acquire cash machines which will lead to an increase in the price of their newspapers reducing the possibility of ordinary Ukrainians to buy papers.

Individuals on the single tax will not be able to sell newspapers and journals on the Internet.

Retail press vendors, individuals on the single tax who had a turnover last year of more than 300 thousand UAH will have to go over to the general system of taxation and register as VAT payers. Retail press vendors on the single tax largely work in small towns and earn small profits. The increase in their tax load will accordingly lead to their closure or an increase in their prices. The least protected groups in society will thus be unable to buy their favourite publications.
In order that citizens are able to buy the press and taxes stimulated the development of the field, we are turning to journalists and editors with the request to publish the positive and negative aspects of the draft Code to help those drawing it up to make the necessary constructive amendments.