The Governor of Odessa region insists on changes of the land tax to strengthen local budgets

KIEV. 22 Feb. UNN. The Chairman of the Odessa regional state administration Maxim Stepanov addressed to the Prime Minister of Ukraine Volodymyr Groisman with a proposal to amend the Tax code. We are talking about changing the rate of land tax for agricultural land. The Chairman of the Odessa regional state administration announced the social network Facebook, reports UNN.

As noted in the statement, in the legislation of Ukraine provides a wide range of size of the land tax, which is established by bodies of Executive power and bodies of local self-government. However, as practice shows, in most cases the land tax rate is set at the minimum level.

Now the land tax rate is 0.3-1% of the normative land valuation and taxation applies to the lowest rate. The Governor proposes to determine the rate at 1% and a more thorough approach to monitoring the payment of this tax, because now the local budgets receive less considerable means for evasion of tax.

“During a meeting with farmers of the region they talked about the so-called “illegal farmers”, who do not rent land and pay no taxes. Making a profit, they “suppress” legitimate farmers. Therefore, together with the farmers we have developed proposals on amendments to the Tax code. We are talking about the improvement of the mechanism of establishment of land tax rates”, – said the Chairman of the Odessa regional state administration.

Also outstanding is Maxim Stepanov drew attention to the fact that the effective use of land requires not only an increase in production volumes, but also education jobs in the countryside, improve the local infrastructure and the like. This should improve the mechanism for setting the land tax rate, local revenues additional financial resources and prevent corruption risks in establishing land tax rates.

“There are a number of changes that I want to make to the Tax code. I turned to the Prime Minister and MPs that they supported our proposals. Our ideas are aimed at output of the agricultural sector out of the shadows and filling local budgets”, – said the Chairman of the Odessa regional state administration Maxim Stepanov.