The 10-10-10 tax reform, promoted over the past year by the deputy head of the President’s Office, Rostislav Shurma, is a modified item in the Opposition Bloc party’s program for the 2019 elections, writes Glavkom. In this program, the party also proposed to equalize the rates of VAT, personal income tax and income tax, but at the level of 12%.
The authors of the “Last Capitalist” community were the first to notice this. They also suggested that Shurma could use other points of this program under the pretext of ideas for reforms, the newspaper notes.
Journalists remind that Shurma was the sixth on the list of the Opposition Bloc in the 2019 elections.
“As for the Opposition Bloc, my economic views have not changed. … In practice, I understand very clearly what needs to be done so that both small and medium-sized businesses develop and large companies invest in the country. And this or that political party is just a tool to promote their economic views, nothing more,” Shurma said in an interview with the Kyiv Post in April.
Consequently, Shurma took the economic “developments” of the “Opposition Bloc” with him to a position in the President’s Office already under the new government, the article says. Journalists remind that the reform has been repeatedly criticized in the Tax Committee of the Parliament, in the National Bank and in the Ministry of Finance. In addition, tax cuts directly contradict the requirements of the IMF. Also, the authors were repeatedly reproached for the lack of transparent calculations regarding the results of the implementation of the “reform”. They have not been provided so far.
“It seems that the key reason why the ‘equalization’ will not work is that this is an idea without a ‘correction’ for war, developed in the interests of Opblok investors (i.e. a large oligarchic business) and has nothing to do with economic realities today », the article says. At the same time, Opoblok’s program of “new industrialization” contrasted “the policy of the collapse of the industrial sector, turning Ukraine into a raw material appendage” and the “financial diktat of the IMF”, to which the previous government agreed.
Among other ideas that Shurma “signed up to” are state support for key industries, lowering tariffs for utilities, “conducting their all-Ukrainian audit, based on the results of which tariffs will be recalculated.”
“Despite the accusations of populism by the authorities at that time, the “industrializers” themselves also added “populist notes” to their program: they promised their voters an increase in pensions, payments at the birth of a child (from UAH 100,000 for the first to 400 for the third and each subsequent one), salaries to state employees, free medical policies at the expense of employers, etc.- the article says.
Particular attention, according to the authors, deserves the political slogans of the party, which also signed Shurma. “For example, Opoblok called for the full implementation of the Minsk agreements, the lifting of the food and economic blockade of Donbass and Crimea, the restoration of passenger rail links with Donetsk, Luhansk and Simferopol (!), the holding of elections for deputies of the Donetsk and Lugansk regional councils simultaneously with local elections in Ukraine, restoration of direct passenger (primarily aviation) communication between Ukraine and Russia”- the article says.
Also in the “Opblok” they called for granting Ukraine a non-bloc status, and the Russian language - the status of an official one; “creating conditions for the free use and comprehensive development of the languages of national minorities”, as well as “giving each of the 27 regions the right to determine the language of instruction and office work based on the results of a local referendum and the decision of the regional council (regional, city, district)”.
“If the Deputy Chairman of the Office has not changed his economic beliefs and sincerely admits this, then what is the probability that he also did not change the political component of these beliefs? This is an open question, to which Rostislav Igorevich, perhaps, should nevertheless give a public and direct answer.- the author sums up.
Source: Fakty
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