KIEV, December 28. /TASS/. Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada /parliament/ will work through the night to finally pass the budget-related package of bills, Yuri Lutsenko, the leader of the Pyotr Poroshenko Bloc faction, told a briefing on Sunday.
“Today we will pass all bills. Today may eventually become tomorrow but we are going to work with no breaks,” he said, adding he hoped the draft budget for 2015 would be ultimately passed. “I think today is going to be a productive day, concerning all the bills.”
He pledged the Pyotr Poroshenko Bloc faction would support all budget-related bills but it had “serious claims” to some of them. “Now we are yet to word our claims properly,” he said. In his words, issues of transport privileges, of certain pension privileges for law enforcers and state servants, and of tax policy in the farming sector were still debatable. “Our factions will insist that the government should reports about economic results and budget execution in the first quarter of 2015,” Lutsenko noted.
Oleg Lyashko, the leader of the Radical Party faction, said the coalition had agreed amendments to the Tax Code. These amendments, in his words, provided for a 20% tax on passive income /royalty, etc./, a five-percent tax on dividends for companies paying profit taxes and a 20% tax on dividends for companies that pay no profit tax. Lawmakers decided that VAT for grain exports was not repayable to anyone - neither to producers, nor to traders. However they decided a special taxation regime for agricultural producers should stay in place.
Apart from that, Lyashko said, lawmakers had reached consensus on resuming rent charges for transportation of ammonia, oil and gas.