The 2008 must become the last year when the country lives according to the old tax legislation. The President of Ukraine Victor Yushchenko declared this on January 30 this year during the All-Ukrainian Forum "The Authorities and Business are Partners". Prime Minister Yulia Timoshenko is standing on this position too. As a matter of fact the existing tax legislation was created at the end of the 90-th of the last century, when there was a completely different economic situation in the country. Total non-payments, unemployment, non-payments of salaries and barter, forced the state to enter the maximally hard mechanisms of taxations and set extremely high rates in order to collect some taxes though.

Ten years have passed since then, economy is continued by the growth for nine years, most enterprises rehabilitated their production, salaries are growing and paid in time, as well as pensions and social subsidies. Meantime tax legislation throughout these years practically has not changed. And if in the period of crisis high rates, the hard terms of taxation and wide rights for tax inspectors were justified, nowadays the tax system turned into one of the obstacles for economic development of the country.

The economy is developing and becomes more complicated.   Ten years ago nobody heard of leasing, faktoringe or output of the company on IPO. And now these are ordinary operations for everybody… besides tax service – such complicated transactions are simply unknown for tax legislation.

The environmental protection is another important aspect. In the nearest future the quality of the environment will become one of the key factors of competitiveness of the country, not speaking of its substantial influence on its demographic situation and health of the nation. Meantime headquarters of the enterprises quite easily violate ecological legislation. The headquarters of "the dirty productions" have nothing to be afraid of in particular. In fact fines for ecological violations frequently are in ten or even in hundreds times less than profits received by an enterprise, producing and exporting products with the use of out-of-date, «dirty» technologies.

The Draft of the Tax Code of Ukraine developed by the working group of the European Party of Ukraine under the supervision of the People’s Deputy Mykola Katerynchuk is directed exactly on the decision of all of these issues. Simplification of the procedure of the taxation, the decrease of the tax loading on the hi-tech sectors of the economy of the country simultaneously with the increase of the responsibility for contamination of the nature became the essence of the document which is offered for your consideration.