The President of Ukraine has signed Decree No. 582/2020 “On the Council for the Promotion of Small Business Development” and approved its provisions.
According to the document, this advisory body under the President of Ukraine is created to facilitate constructive cooperation between public authorities and small businesses and their public associations.
Volodymyr Zelenskyi has appointed Yuliia Svyrydenko, Deputy Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, as the Chairman of the Council for the Promotion of Small Business Development. She must make proposals on the staff of the Small Business Council within five days,
The first meeting of the Council took place in the Office of the President of Ukraine.
The head of the Office of the Head of State Andrii Yermak took part in it. He introduced his new deputy, Yuliia Svyrydenko, who will coordinate the work of the newly created Council.
Andrii Yermak called on the participants to organize the work of the body as soon as possible and to work out proposals and prepare solutions to the problems of small business as soon as possible. These proposals will be submitted to the National Reform Council under the President of Ukraine for consideration.
Andrii Yermak stressed that an effective dialogue with entrepreneurs should be built to correct mistakes and work out constructive solutions.
Yuliia Svyrydenko, Deputy Head of the Office of the President and Chairman of the Council for the Promotion of Small Business Development, noted that the staff of the Council was being finalized and would be approved soon.
According to Yuliia Svyrydenko, there are about 1.8 million small entrepreneurs in Ukraine, so it is extremely important to hear their real problems and help solve them.
The Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine has approved a draft order developed by the Ministry of Culture and Information Policy to approve the action plan for the implementation of the first stage (until 2022) of the Ukrainian Language Promotion Strategy until 2030 “Strong language – successful state”.
The purpose of the document is to form a comfortable and functional Ukrainian-speaking environment throughout the country for the entire population, as well as to increase the prestige and authority of the state language.
The action plan, in particular, provides:
- ensuring of strict observance by educational institutions of the legislation on conducting the educational process in the state language;
- increasing of the level of Ukrainian language proficiency of pedagogical and scientific-pedagogical workers; providing of educational institutions with Ukrainian-language literature;
- state language courses, in particular through online platforms, a number of mobile applications and other remote forms;
- access to electronic textbooks and other literature in the Ukrainian language, materials on the cultural heritage of the people and the formation of the state;
- introduction of the Ukrainian language exam for those who apply for Ukrainian citizenship (from April 2021);
- amendments to the legislation in order to strengthen the integration processes of national minorities in Ukrainian society, in particular, to provide appropriate conditions for language learning and equal opportunities for all citizens;
- ensuring of the study of the Ukrainian language by Ukrainians living abroad, protection of the language rights of people of Ukrainian ethnic origin in the countries where they currently live, and support for public initiatives aimed at promoting the language abroad.
The implementation of this order does not require additional expenditures from the state or local budgets.
The Government has instructed the ministries and other central executive bodies, regional and Kyiv city state administrations to ensure the implementation of the action plan within the expenditures provided for in the state and local budgets for the respective year, as well as from other sources not prohibited by law.
The State Treasury Service of Ukraine has reported that in accordance with Resolution of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine “On the formation and liquidation of districts” No. 807-ІХ of July 17, 2020 and Art. 4 of Law of Ukraine “On the collection and accounting of unified single tax to the obligatory state social insurance” No. 2464-VI of July 8, 2010, as of January 1, 2021 new accounts for crediting revenues to state and local budgets and crediting the unified social tax for compulsory state social insurance (hereinafter – UST) will be introduced.
The representatives of the State Treasury Service of Ukraine have stressed that the funds paid by taxpayers to the old accounts for crediting taxes, fees and UST will not be credited, but will be returned to taxpayers as unexplained receipts.
Regional treasury services have already begun publishing new accounts for crediting taxes and fees. Thus, accounts have already appeared for the following regions:
- Zakarpattia;
- Kirovohrad;
- Sumy;
- Ternopil;
- Kharkiv.
New accounts for UST payment have not been published yet.
The State Tax Service of Ukraine through the Office of Large Taxpayers has explained that in a situation where a business entity within the inventory of 2020 has decided to write off receivables, it should act as follows.
In accordance with paragraph “a” of item 14.1.11 of the Tax Code of Ukraine (hereinafter – the Tax Code) in the wording effective from May 23, 2020, bad debt is a debt that corresponds, in particular, to such a feature as debt on liabilities for which the statute of limitations has expired.
According to Art. 256 of the Civil Code of Ukraine (hereinafter – the Civil Code) statute of limitations is the period within which a person may apply to the court to protect their civil rights or interests. The general statute of limitations is set at three years (Article 257 of the Civil Code).
Paragraph “a” of item 14.1.11 of the Tax Code does not establish any additional conditions for the recognition of debts on liabilities for which the the statute of limitations has expired as bad. This rule of the Tax Code does not stipulate the need for the taxpayer-creditor to take any measures to recover the debt, in particular in court, to declare the debtor bankrupt, and so on.
Therefore, the exclusive and sufficient criterion for recognizing the debt as uncollectible in accordance with paragraph “a” of item 14.1.11 of the Tax Code is the expiration of the statute of limitations on such debt, regardless of whether the creditor went to court to recover it or not.
If the debt meets the criteria specified in paragraph “a” item 14.1.11 of the Tax Code, the taxpayer should not check the compliance of such debt to other criteria provided for in item 14.1.11 of the Tax Code.
At the same time, it should be noted that in accordance with item 14.1.257 of the Tax Code the amount of debt of one taxpayer to another, which is not collected after the expiration of the statute of limitations, is a non-repayable financial assistance.
The State Labor Service of Ukraine has explained the peculiarities of the use of labor during the winter holidays.
New Year (January 1) and Christmas (January 7 and December 25) are recognized in Ukraine as holidays. As a general rule, the involvement of a worker to work on a weekend, holiday or non-working day, not set by the shift schedule (working day), is prohibited.
However, in accordance with paragraph 3 Art. 73of the Labor Code of Ukraine (hereinafter – the Labor Code) the work on these days allowed, the termination of which is impossible due to production and technical conditions (continuously operating enterprises, institutions, organizations), work caused by the need to serve the population. Work with the involvement of employees is allowed on these days in the cases and in the manner prescribed by Art. 71 of the Labor Code.
Thus, in accordance with Art. 71of the Labor Code, the involvement of individual employees is allowed only with the permission of the elected body of the primary trade union organization (trade union representative) of the enterprise, institution, organization and only in exceptional cases, namely:
1) to prevent or eliminate the consequences of natural disasters, epidemics, epizootics, industrial accidents and immediate elimination of their consequences;
2) to prevent accidents that endanger or may endanger the life or normal living conditions of people, death or damage to property;
3) for the performance of urgent, unforeseen work, the immediate performance of which depends on the further normal operation of the enterprise, institution, organization as a whole or their individual units;
4) to perform urgent loading and unloading operations in order to prevent or eliminate downtime of rolling stock or accumulation of goods at points of departure and destination.
Involvement of employees to work on weekends and holidays, including the New Year and Christmas, is carried out by written order of the owner or the authorized body.
Work on weekends, holidays or non-working days is compensated in accordance with Art. 107of the Labor Code.
In particular, work on these days is paid in double amount to:
1) business travelers – at double business trip rates;
2) employees whose work is paid at hourly or daily rates – in the amount of double the hourly or daily rate;
3) employees who receive a monthly salary – in the amount of a single hourly or daily rate above the salary, if the work on holidays and non-working days was carried out within the monthly working hours, and in the amount of double hourly or daily rate above the salary, if the work was more for the monthly rate.
Payment in the specified amount is made for the hours actually worked on holidays and non-working days.
At the request of an employees who worked on holidays and non-working days, they may be granted another day off.
