Last Monday the State Tax Administration gave its response to the president’s statements about corruption flourishing in our country. In the words of head of the State Tax Administration (STA) tax police Viktor Zhvaliuk, his department sees as major source for additional revenues to the treasury precisely the part of Ukraine’s economy, which is called shadow or illegal in spite of the fact that everybody knows about it. Round sums are being hidden in this shadow from the STA torch. Tax servicemen are going to withdraw them, clean them, and channel to the state budget. One of the main fields where they are protecting budget interests has always been the excisable commodity market. Thus, alcoholic beverage and tobacco will be subject to the STA’s special attention. To make its control as effective as possible, the tax service is planning to get closer to its subject and initiate introducing excise warehouses in Ukraine.
In Mr. Zhvaliuk’s opinion, if confiscated arms and drugs are preserved in special warehouses, it is possible to do the same with excisable commodities. The goods kept in the excise warehouses will be a 100% deposit. If its owner commits any violation in his work, buys an invalid excise stamp, uses alcohol for producing clandestine vodka, etc., the whole deposit becomes state property and is channeled into the budget. Thus, the tax service would solve its biggest problem of searching for the culprits and their property to compensate losses and damages. The major goal of creating excise warehouses is to make violating the law economically unprofitable. The tax militia head is convinced that if everybody understands that any violation leads to considerable financial losses, the number of violations will decrease drastically, and the excisable commodities market will come out of the shadow. When such excise warehouses were introduced in Russia, they also used to say that this was done to legalize the alcoholic beverages market. After they had been implemented, tax experts commented that budget revenues had increased. Simultaneously, expert producers and traders kept complaining of billion losses because of the illegal trade. However, the SOVAT association uniting big alcoholic beverage and tobacco producers along with wholesale traders believes that excise warehouses will be good for our market. There is also evidence of the fact that the field of operation here is really vast. Last year the volume of alcohol production decreased by almost three million deciliters, while those of producing vodka increased by almost the same amount. Foreign economic activities have nothing to do with this. Moreover, last year the volume of legal alcohol exports exceeded seven billion deciliters. In general, the tax militia has a great deal on its plate. To be absolutely sure that the purchased alcohol will not be used for producing legal vodka or other spirit-based products, the STA would not be against convoying the alcohol on its own, especially if the cargo is sent abroad. In this case, tax servicemen want to make sure that it is sent to the addressee, not to fake vodka production. However, if all efforts do not bring the desired result, and fake vodka is produced, bottled, supplied with fake excise stamps, and sent to the stores, the last hope remains for the customers’ consciousness. Unfortunately, publishing the statistics on the number of poisoning with fake vodka has no effect. The STA will lobby to introduce new rules for stores selling such products. Most likely, stores’ owners will soon have to provide their stores with special equipment for testing excise stamp authenticity. Thus, everybody will see what he or she is buying. At least, they will be able to see if the stamp is genuine. This triple protection of consumers from counterfeit vodka and of the budget from fake excises will be implemented this year.
Incidentally, the notion of excise storehouses is introduced by the Law No. 4000-1. This document, introducing tax-related amendments to many laws, envisions also storing the excisable commodities. If the president ratifies the law, the STA will only have to work out Regulations on Creating and Functions of the Excise Warehouses.
