The State Tax Service wants access to information on the movement of funds on the accounts of individuals and businesses

Nina Yuzhanina, MP, reminds us of the clause in the National Revenue Strategy that the tax service will have access to data on bank accounts of Ukrainians.

There is also a WARNING that this will happen after effective measures are taken to restore confidence in the work of the tax authorities (especially in terms of working with personal data of taxpayers) and to provide the society with guarantees that these expanded powers will not be used to put pressure on individual taxpayers and obstruct their work.

Only then can we talk about expanding the powers of tax authorities to access information on the movement of funds in taxpayers' bank accounts.

There are currently no steps that would increase the level of taxpayer confidence in the actions of the tax authorities.

However, the tax authorities have already developed proposals for legislative changes to require banks and the National Bank to disclose information that constitutes bank secrecy at the request of the STS.

The STS proposes to include, in particular, information on transactions on the accounts of a particular legal entity, individual entrepreneur or ordinary citizen for a certain period of time, indicating the counterparties and payment purposes.

Banks will be required to provide such information for the purpose of conducting documentary tax audits of banks and their separate subdivisions.

In other words, the State Tax Service intends to obtain information that constitutes bank secrecy about bank customers who are not subject to the relevant tax audits.

The NBU has reviewed these proposals and concluded that the provisions of the Tax Code provide the tax authorities with sufficient grounds to obtain the necessary data.

And by court decision, tax authorities may access information containing bank secrecy to a much greater extent than proposed by the State Tax Service, but for this purpose, it must provide justification as to the expediency and existence of grounds for obtaining such information.

In addition, the expansion of the current legal requirements for disclosure of banking secrecy by the National Bank without a justified need (as proposed by the STS) may be a step backwards in the implementation of EU legislation.

In 2016, the European Banking Authority (EBA) issued a negative opinion on the equivalence of the confidentiality/professional secrecy regime in Ukrainian banking legislation to the requirements of European legislation, and this still results in refusals to exchange information with central banks and regulators of EU member states.

In view of this, the NBU believes that the legislative proposals of the State Tax Service need to be substantially revised before being submitted to the Parliament in order to determine the optimal amount of information constituting banking secrecy that banks will disclose at the request of the State Tax Service.

"I personally learned about the proposals of the State Tax Service, which are being considered by the Tax Committee for further submission to the Parliament, from a letter from the NBU.

Once again, they are secretly developing rules aimed exclusively against business and citizens.

Who is the ideologist of the destruction of the Ukrainian economy?" the MP asks.