Lawyer's Blogs

Offshore for Trading Activities: Is It Necessary

Published: 16/05/2018 | blog

Tags:

#Business #Corporate law #De-offshorization #Export #Import #Legislation #NBU #Offshores #Tax planning #Tax reporting #Taxation Transfer pricing

Until recently, offshore companies have been actively used by the Ukrainian entrepreneurs in international trade to reduce the tax burden and keep business confidentiality. We will consider in this blog whether the situation has changed in the conditions of global deoffshorization, and in particular, tightening of the Ukrainian legislation. The field of trade has always been the simplest and most popular for offshore applications. One of the main goals of using offshore schemes in export-import transactions was to regulate the customs value of the goods, and, accordingly, the company’s trading profits. Offshore companies in such schemes were used as intermediaries between the seller and the buyer for the understatement of the value of goods during the export and overstatement - upon import. However, the process of deoffshorization has reached our country. The provisions for the control of transfer pricing started working in the Ukrainian legislation. The Cabinet of Ministers has approved and periodically reviews the list of the countries with preferential taxation (it includes both classic offshores and jurisdictions, the income tax rate for the companies which have 5 or more...

Changes in transfer pricing

Published: 21/02/2018 | blog

Tags:

#Tax disputes #Tax reporting Transfer pricing

As we have noted earlier, numerous amendments to the tax legislation have been introduced by the Law of Ukraine No. 2245-VII “On Amendments to the Tax Code of Ukraine and certain legislative acts of Ukraine regarding ensuring the balanced budget income in 2018”. In this article, we want to highlight the changes that transfer pricing has undergone, namely the changes introduced by the above-mentioned Law in article 39 of the Tax Code of Ukraine. The first significant step has been the introduction of changes in the criteria that are applied by the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine in determining “low-tax” states (territories). If previously, one of such criteria has been the existence of a profit tax rate in the state (territory), which is 5 and more percentage points lower than in Ukraine (subparagraph 39.2.1.2, paragraph 39.2, article 39 of the TCU), but now, except for the low rate of income tax, those states (territories) “that provide economic entities with preferential taxation regimes or in which the features of calculating the tax base actually allow business entities not to pay corporate income tax (corporate tax) or pay it at the rate, which is 5 percentage...