Parliament passes bill criminalizing smuggling with amendments proposed by business

The Rada passed the draft law #5420 on criminalization of smuggling with committee amendments proposed by Ukrainian business. business. The decision was voted for by 248 MPs. The adoption of the document was announced by the first Deputy Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Finance, Taxation and Customs Policy, Yaroslav Zheleznyak, reports UNN.

Once again, I thank the business for changing our position so quickly together) We have six months to reboot the BES)

Details

In particular, Zheleznyak noted that the Committee's version of the draft law was adopted yesterday, which the amendments insisted on by the business.

In particular, according to the MP, at least five changes were made to the draft law.

1) The thresholds for smuggling of goods are proposed to be raised by 5 times.

2) The thresholds for excisable goods are to be raised by 2 times.

3) The entry into force of the commodity tax is postponed until mid-2024. year. As I said, this is the IMF's deadline for rebooting the BES

4) Numerous insistences of business on the indication of of the intentional form of guilt, only in the presence of which actions can be qualified actions as a crime.

5) significantly limited the possible cases of prosecution for liability under "smuggling" articles for submitting documents with false information - in false information - in the amended version, they should be the basis for movement of goods, should be subject to mandatory declaration in accordance with customs legislation, as well as have an impact on determining the amount of customs payments or compliance with non-tariff regulation measures.

It should be noted that the adoption of this draft law is a requirement of the macro-financial from the EU for EUR 1.5 billion this year.

As a reminder

On December 6, MPs saidthat the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Law Enforcement has reconsidered its decision on the draft law on criminalization of smuggling of goods and excisable goods, as well as false declaration of goods (No. 5420).

У same day, the business called on MPs to finalize the draft law No. 5420 on  the criminalization of smuggling.

In particular, the European Business Association noted that the hottest issues for business are several aspects: in particular, the threshold of liability for customs offenses - 147 thousand of unpaid payments is unreasonably low (for comparison, the liability for tax evasion is triggered in case of non-payment of UAH 3 million); the draft law provides for too wide a range of punishment (a relatively small fine of UAH 17 thousand or imprisonment for for a long term of up to 11 years, which entails multiple corruption risks); and etc.