WAYS TOWARDS ADVANCED AUTOMATIC MEASURES TO PREVENT VAT EVASION

Abstract

This paper intends to bring a view on possible measures, which the Cabinet of Ministers and Finance Department of Ukraine are authorized to implement. These measures concern introducing new criteria for evaluating the level of risks, sufficient for stopping a registration of tax invoices/adjustment calculations, depending on a kind of the stated goods’ issue. Both the criteria and implementation of those are based on the information, received from an automated VAT payers’ inventory accounting system, necessary for creationas a component of VAT electronic administration system. The paper brings a view on measures, intended to automate a processof reviewing tax payers’ written explanations by the SFS committee, established in accord to FDU’s order # 566 on 13.06.2017. In addition, some automatic measures to prevent realizing the “twisting” operations have been proposed in the paper. It was noted that the procedure for stopping the registration of risky tax invoices was introduced as a means of automatically preventing such a widespread VAT avoidance scheme as a “twist” for all goods, and not just for fuel. In this article, under the risky tax billing/ adjustment calculations, it is proposed to understand such tax invoices/adjustments calculations that satisfy the approved criteria of the Ministry of Finance to assess the degree of risk sufficient to stop their registration. It is noted that the principle of indiscretion has already been established in Ukraine. It is established prematurely, since it is not yet backed up by effective automatic measures to prevent VAT deviations. The real implementation of this principle is one of the key points in improving the investment climate and implementing economic reforms in Ukraine. It will sharply increase the level of freedom of doing business in Ukraine, will open the way for an automatic VAT refund procedure and deprive enterprises of unreasonable checks that are carried out in connection with the detection of tax breaches by their counterparties (and, more often, counteragents of their counterparties).