The bank is watching you. How and when will the tax office receive information about the accounts of individual entrepreneurs?

People’s deputies are making serious reforms in the field of taxation. On November 28, they received the text of the draft law No. 8226 “On Amending the Tax Code of Ukraine on the Special Taxation Regime of Some Taxpayers of the Third Group of Single Taxes and Some Legal Regulations of Ukraine”. . The explanatory note to the draft states that the main purpose of the bill is to simplify the mechanism for the fulfillment of tax obligations by individuals who are entrepreneurs who pay a single tax of the third group without VAT and without employing employees. Focus I learned what this is about and how the new tax initiative will help or conversely harm entrepreneurs.

The bank pays taxes. How and why are tax amounts deducted from the accounts of sole proprietors?

Today, FOPs for single tax of the third group are concerned with the timeliness and completeness of tax payments and keep tax reporting.

“Registration is allowed on a random basis by the method of monthly reflection of income received. Also, quarterly – within 40 calendar days following the last calendar day of the reporting quarter, a tax return is submitted to the State. At the location of the tax address indicating the amount of income received and the amount of tax payable A single tax must be paid within 10 calendar days following the Tax Service and tax filing deadline. It is sent through the payer’s electronic account and the taxes are paid into special accounts,” said Alena Paliy, attorney at Stron Legal Services.

The lawyer emphasized: Entrepreneurs on a single tax of the third group must independently pay a single contribution “for themselves”, not less than the minimum insurance premium (minimum salary and single contribution rate). This payment is made quarterly, until the 20th of the month following the end of the relevant quarter. Once a year, the FOP must report the amount of individual contributions paid.

However, the Draft Law No. 8226 amends the procedures regarding the payment of taxes by third group owners on a single tax.

“The new changes bring the institution of tax agents for persons in group 3 as a bank. That is, on behalf of the FOP, the serving bank will independently calculate and pay the single tax and the single social contribution, and also submit the tax returns. This option will be offered to sole proprietors of the 3rd group who do not use paid labor, are not VAT payers, and receive only non-cash funds within the allowable limit.

According to him, because paying taxes becomes the bank’s concern, sole proprietors just have to make money and don’t worry about meeting reporting and paying tax deadlines. In other words, the risk of tax liability is minimized.

“Everything will be monitored by the bank. The main thing is that there should be funds in the private entrepreneur’s account,” says Marynyuk.

Thus, the draft law proposes that FOPs of the third group of the single tax open a special entrepreneurial account, submit an application with information on the tax account and transfer the function of a payment intermediary to the bank, which will debit the tax amount. account.

“When depositing funds into a private entrepreneur account of the payer, the bank will deduct tax at the appropriate rate determined by law from the loan amount and transfer the tax to the relevant budget within the next two working days at the latest. For the funds in the private entrepreneurial account, the bank will also pay a single fee from the taxpayers of the third groups as a tax agent. The payer will need to ensure that by the first day of the reporting month the special account always has the necessary funds to pay such payments, otherwise the bank will have to send a notice to the regulatory authority that it is not required. funds in the accountAlena Paliy explained:

Despite a certain simplification of the procedure, it is important that the obligation to file a tax return by the sole proprietorship continues. In addition, if the counterparty made a payment to the FOP account, and then the transaction is canceled, the buyer must return the money – and a situation arises when the bank has already transferred the amount of tax to the budget, that is, the entrepreneur simply loses money.

“If it is necessary to recalculate the tax (adjust the amount of income (for example, in connection with the refusal of services, return of goods)), there will be difficulties. The draft law regulates that the tax paid (overpaid or incorrectly paid) will not be refunded.“, – said Tatyana Yashchenko, partner of EXPATPRO.

Important

Lawyers believe that this approach certainly has its drawbacks, as it leads to real money losses for the third group of small entrepreneurs.

“An individual entrepreneur using the services of a tax agent bank cannot return excess and / or accidentally paid taxes and credit against other mandatory payments. For example, an individual entrepreneur received money in his account. The bank deducted from such income tax and paid it to the budget. However, FOP The relationship between the opposing party did not work out and he had to return the funds to the latter. But the tax is long gone from the budget and nothing can be done about it. Result: Loss of 5% of currently unearned income. Therefore, the proposed changes need to be finalized.“, – emphasizes Ivan Marynyuk.

Tax consultant Alexandra Tomashevskaya explained the mechanism and meaning of a single payment of tax by a bank: “For example, if an entrepreneur receives UAH 10,000, the bank immediately after registration keeps 5% or UAH 500 and deposits the funds “cleared” into the client’s account. At the same time, the withholding tax is transferred to the budget. It has been proposed to set the deadline for transfer of funds to be at the latest two working days from the withholding date. Under the guise of “facilitating” the business of entrepreneurs with taxes, the budget will actually be taxed every day in real time. Excess taxes are not refundable.

According to TOTUM LF consultant lawyer Yana Mikhailyuk, it is not yet clear what fees banks will charge for performing the functions of a tax representative and whether the price of a bank’s services will be more profitable than the cost of an accountant’s services. on an external basis. Also, according to Yana Mikhailyuk, The law contains several interesting provisions that balance such profitability in the following cases:

• funds paid by the bank as a single tax are not refunded because they were erroneously or overpaid or credited for the fulfillment of other obligations; nothing can be changed if the bank made a mistake when calculating the tax;
• it is not clear how the bank will allocate all the funds received in the account of the sole taxpayer, for example, incorrectly paid funds or returned goods, etc. funds, i.e. funds not included in the single tax base;
• On the invoice The question of whether private business accounts will be denominated in foreign currency is not detailed..

“In the future, this may cause misunderstandings, and if banks refuse to open such special accounts in foreign currency, this will further narrow the circle of those who can take advantage of this option,” says Yana Mikhailyuk.

All information is tax information. Why does the bill ensure that data is passed on to tax authorities?

Law No. 8226 is presented as “simplifying” the life of entrepreneurs. But it can also pose certain threats to business. Finally The document provides for the obligation of banks, upon request, to provide tax information on transactions in private entrepreneur accounts with a tax agent bank, that is, all information on transactions in crediting funds to accounts for payment purposes. , identification data and account number of the counterparty.

“This obligation significantly frees the tax authorities’ hands, because today all this data is considered a banking secret and tax authorities can access them only at the will of the taxpayer (if the payer himself provides statements of accounts during inspections, as primary documents) or that much in court, which is not simple (usually such claims are dismissed for unfoundedness). Now tax authorities can only receive information about the availability of bank accounts upon their written request to the bank, no more“, – explained Alena Paly.

According to him, we are talking about a direct encroachment on banking secrecy.

“In the bill, there is no binding provision that access to information on transactions in special accounts will be provided only subject to supervision, that is, the tax office can theoretically request information about a bank account at any time. It turns out that the tax authorities took a mechanism to bypass bank secrecy.“, says the lawyer.

According to Alena Paliy, as a result, tax authorities will also have access to the data of the personal accounts of entrepreneurs.

“Personal accounts are of the most interest to tax authorities, since taxpayers themselves can access the entrepreneur accounts of an FOP during the verification process and it is usually “clean”, but access to personal accounts is closed for them, which is most often used for tax evasion” says Paly.

Important

turned into shape, If the individual entrepreneur has accepted the function of the bank as a tax agent, then at the request of the tax authorities, the data of his accounts will be transferred to tax without his knowledge.. Tatyana Yashchenko notes that neither the bank nor the entrepreneur himself is able to control the grounds, frequency and procedure for the use (storage and processing) of information received by the tax authorities from the bank.

“In the case of auditing the activities of sole proprietorships, the tax authorities now turn to the entrepreneur with the obligation to provide such documents in the order of document examinations. Here the entrepreneur is involved in the audit process, controlling the amount of information (including the personal data of his customers) transferred to the regulatory authorities according to the purpose of the audit. In the case of single taxpayers, tax authorities should only be concerned with transaction volume. For this purpose, a turnover sheet for a certain period is quite sufficient.“, – says Tatyana Yashchenko.

Important

Attorney sure: if the purpose of data collection by tax authorities does not fully comply with the objectives of verifying the correctness of the calculation and payment of tax, such provisions should be provided within the framework of a specially arranged procedure – anti-corruption, criminal procedure.

“According to the draft law no. 8226, the information that the bank has to give free of charge to the tax authorities is within the limits of banking secrecy,” the expert is sure.

Alexandra Tomashevskaya believes that the norm on the unhindered receipt of information on business accounts by tax authorities from project 8226 should definitely be abolished. “Currently, the tax authorities do not receive data on the movement of funds in the accounts of bank customers. The right to access this information is only possible during the tax inspection procedure or by court order. I believe that there is a potential for significant abuse of these rights by the tax authorities and that such a provision should be enacted.‘, says the tax expert.

The good news is that If this project is accepted, entrepreneurs have the opportunity not to transfer the function of a tax agent to a bank – here the sole proprietorships are allowed to voluntarily decide to transfer the obligation to pay taxes to the bank, or to open a special account. work with paying taxes and filing reports on their own.

“FOPs who are concerned about data “leakage” from the bank may not be able to use the bank’s services as a tax agent, Ivan Marynyuk believes.