Several thousand entrepreneurs from different regions of Ukraine gathered this morning near the Verkhovna Rada to protest against the adoption of bills that complicate the work of small businesses, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
We are talking about demands to prevent the transition to full accounting, which would mean the introduction of cash registers and the daily submission of cash flow reports by entrepreneurs to the tax office, which will seriously complicate the life of businessmen. In this case, they will need to buy and register cash registers, pay an accountant, and will be fined for the slightest errors and failures in transmitting reports. Therefore, they require maintaining the simplified accounting system.
Entrepreneurs held posters in their hands with the inscriptions “Save small business: listen to us!”, “Cash registers are forks, or fairs are dead!”, “We are against the destruction of entrepreneurship!”, “No to the destruction of small businesses by cash registers!” etc.
An alternative rally is being held nearby in the park near the Vatutin monument, the few participants of which demanded, on the contrary, the introduction of full accounting for small traders, citing the fact that this will help fight shadow income.
Its participants held posters with the inscriptions “Is business in Europe also without checks?”, “Only PPO (complete accounting) for everyone can restore fair competition,” “The consumer also has the right to protection,” etc.
Several businessmen tried to interfere with a speaker at an alternative rally and snatch the microphone from his hands. The police had to intervene and separate the conflicting people.
The speaker called entrepreneurs “representatives of chaos” and accused them of being against honest business and for smuggling. “They want us to continue to be robbed by the oligarchs!” – he said and invited the rally participants to chant “No shadows!”, but almost no one took up this slogan.
A woman from among those entrepreneurs who tried to interfere with the alternative rally explained to a PolitNavigator correspondent that she was in favor of maintaining a simplified accounting system for small businesses, because otherwise she would lose her income.
An alternative meeting, she said, was gathered by representatives of retailers - they can afford to keep full accounting records and use cash registers, but market traders cannot.
“We are disturbing them, and they want to remove us. They want to introduce cash registers, but we are against it. We pay taxes, we pay everything. I am a pensioner, I earn little. I pay tax, I don’t hide it,” she said.
Later that same day, information appeared that the Verkhovna Rada intends to consider a bill tomorrow that proposes to delay the use of cash registers for a simplified taxation system for small and medium-sized businesses until 2022.