The tax police are operating partly outside the law these days because in its work it often refers to the law on militia, which has long time been dumped, Finance Minister Oleksandr Danyluk said in an interview on Sonya Koshkina's Left Bank TV show.
He said the tax police cost a lot to the state, and its public perception is very negative, as evidenced by foreign investors.
"Its budget amounted to 553m hryvnyas, while its contribution to national coffers was only 520m. That is, the difference is more than 30m. On the one hand, the presence of this service has to motivate people to shy away from breaking the law. On the other hand, the tax police are causing the damage that is much greater than the difference of 30m," said Danyluk.
He says the elimination of the tax service is one of the top priorities in its work.
He described his vision of the future of the service: "It has to be an analytical service trained to deal with the schemes that allow tax evasion and other economic crimes against the state. Such a project, however, requires the adoption of a separate law. I will submit to the cabinet a draft that I have worked on for several years with a group of deputies. We have developed a common model, so the bill that we will initiate will be based on that vision."
He stressed that the current reform of the tax service is fundamentally different from the one that previous Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk tried to introduce.
"I was present at an extended cabinet meeting, when this bill was discussed, and I was categorically against it because it envisaged a mechanical amalgamation of the functions of all the organs that are involved in preventing economic crimes against the state. No optimization, no changes in attitudes, simply an integrated body. I believe this reform needs a different approach. It should be an analytical service," Danyluk stressed.
He is confident that the previous bill on the elimination of the tax service has only strengthened the existing system.
The previous head of the tax service, Volodymyr Khomenko, was involved in the preparation of the bill, the minister recalled, so the previous law was unavoidably aimed at strengthening the existing system. "For the reform to be successful, it needs new people and certainly from outside the tax service," concluded the head of the Finance Ministry.