OREANDA-NEWS. November 19, 2012. Yuriy Kolobov, Minister of Finance, attended an International Conference on Practice and Problems of Tax Law Application considering the questions coming to taxpayers at the time of tax payment, ways of tax administration and taxpayer service improvement, and terms of approximating Ukrainian tax laws to the best European and global standards.

In his speech Minister of Finance Yuriy Kolobov declared the tax policy one of economy gears showing its efficiency on the country’s financial and economic stance, investment opportunities, and ratings.

He said that, now that tax policy is amended, Ukraine has largely improved its World Bank rank. For instance, the "Paying Taxes" ranking of Ukraine has risen by 18 point. This has been due to consistency, balance and sobriety of Ukrainian authorities implementing governmental reforms specifically including the tax law liberalization.

However, notwithstanding positive developments, reforming is still underway and improving all the time, and the Government is now facing a number of challenges as follows:

- continuity with lowering tax burden of the business;

- reducing the time a taxpayer spends to assess and pay his/her taxes by simplifying accounting forms and tax procedures. An effort in this matter is supposed to be the transition to income tax annual accounting period as from 2013 (with monthly advance instalment for those taxpayers with annual income over UAH 10 million);

- keeping the improve of the Tax Code rules;

- ensuring that the practice is further developed of minimizing tax bodies’ direct communication with taxpayers (e-filing and remote service).

In conclusion, Minister of Finance said that the current state reforms’ overall objective is to form tax law’s favourable incentives to drive the business and attract investments, and ensure steady economic growth in Ukraine.