E Ukraine to No Longer Pay Taxes to Kyiv
Companies and businesses in eastern Ukraine will stop paying taxes to
the Ukrainian budget once Kyiv imposes economic blockade on Donbass,
Alexander Khodakovsky, the secretary of the Security Council of the
self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), said on Thursday.
“Before
the blockade, there was a scheme under which we exist in a common
financial and economic system with Ukraine, but enjoy political
independence. After Kyiv imposes blockade, we will change this system
and those enterprises that used to pay taxes to Ukraine will pay them
exclusively to the Donetsk People’s Republic,” he said, adding that the
republic would find sufficient funds to fill its budget and fulfil its
liabilities.
Negative effect on Kyiv
The economic blockade
imposed by Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko against the
self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) will have a negative
effect on Ukraine itself, the republic’s Tax Minister Alexander
Timofeyev told TASS.
“If they close the last Ukrainian bank
working here, Oshchadbank, it means that the last enterprises in the
republic that have paid taxes to Kyiv cannot do it any longer. According
to my data, 4.8 billion hryvnia (over $309 million) were transferred
from the DPR to Ukraine over the past three months. So it is not known
for whom it is worse,” Timofeyev said.
Kyiv’s economic sanctions
will create problems for DPR residents, but the republic’s authorities
are ready to solve them, he said. “We have almost set up our own banking
system and are ready for an economic blockade Ukraine threatens to
impose against us,” the minister said.