Ukraine's Rada budget chair proposes scrapping National Cashback in 2027 budget
The National Cashback state budget program has become an overly politicized issue in the Verkhovna Rada, and it would therefore be advisable to abandon it when considering the draft state budget of Ukraine for 2027, although this would not result in any significant savings in expenditures, head of the parliamentary Budget Committee Roksolana Pidlasa said.
Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada Budget Committee chair, Roksolana Pidlasa, has proposed scrapping the National Cashback program from the 2027 state budget. Pidlasa argues that the program has become overly politicized and is a distracting issue that overshadows substantive budget discussions. She emphasizes that the program's spending amount is insignificant in the overall budget context and that even the International Monetary Fund does not consider it when discussing the budget structure.
Pidlasa suggests that raising the value-added tax rate to 21% or increasing the fuel excise tax by 4 percentage points is unlikely to be approved by the Verkhovna Rada. She also mentions that alternative proposals, such as introducing an import duty, are equally unlikely to pass. Pidlasa believes that alternative measures, such as a luxury tax or higher speeding fines, might be considered but acknowledges their small fiscal impact.
The head of the Budget Committee stresses that greater focus should be placed on closing budget leakages, such as off-the-books salaries, which account for significant budget losses. She points out that the effect of some small tax increase or even a 1-percentage-point rise in VAT is incomparable to the substantial budget losses due to off-the-books salaries.
Written by urgent.news from Interfax-Ukraine's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
