“Illustration by REUTERSTobacco corporations started a game aimed at the failure of the Ministry of Finance bill 11090 on increasing excise duties on tobacco products. Such tools of lobbyists as the draft law…”, — write: www.unian.ua
Illustration by REUTERSTobacco corporations started a game aimed at the failure of the Ministry of Finance bill 11090 on increasing excise duties on tobacco products. Such tools of lobbyists as draft law spam and attempts to drag legislators into an endless, fruitless discussion about secondary details in the tobacco tax system were used.This was stated by Taras Zahorodniy, managing partner of the National Anti-Crisis Group. He reminded that it is no longer possible to delay the adoption of the draft law proposed by the Ministry of Finance, because it is about the immediate need to increase budget revenues to finance defense next year.
“During consideration in the Verkhovna Rada, the draft law of the Ministry of Finance caused resistance from large tobacco corporations. While publicly they support the bill, “behind the scenes” they conspired to fail the project as a whole. But on the part of tobacco corporations, we observe the use of old, but effective lobbying techniques to delay or fail the vote.They are actively creating chaos and empty information noise around this bill to confuse legislators. For this, they raise secondary issues and use other manipulations, trying to switch the attention of deputies to them,” Taras Zahorodniy explained the tricks of the tobacco lobby.
According to him, the strategy of “spamming” and “flooding” the draft law with unimportant details will give corporations the opportunity to conserve the old model of taxation: when excise rates increase only by 20% every year, and their calculation in hryvnias instead of euros completely eliminates additional revenues to the budget due to the risks of devaluation of the national currency Due to the efforts of the tobacco lobby, the state will receive less revenue, although the draft law of the Ministry of Finance on raising excise rates gives Ukraine the opportunity to significantly increase budget revenue – in the first year alone, more than UAH 5 billion will be added.
The expert urged the legislators to ignore these games of lobbyists and adopt the draft law proposed by the Ministry of Finance. While the authors of draft law spam and discussions about secondary aspects of excise reform simply seek to confuse legislators — to create the impression that the draft law of the Ministry of Finance 11090 is imperfect, which, in the end, should lead to the postponement of the vote, the involvement of representatives of the deputy corps in endless meaningless discussions, or the failure of the initiative of the Ministry of Finance in general .
However, according to Zagorodnyi, this is precisely what tobacco corporations are striving for, “defeating” the draft law on raising excise taxes. But the state will lose time and billions of budget revenues due to these games of lobbyists.
“We must remember: the countdown to the beginning of the 2025 budget year is already underway, so right now the deputies should adopt the basic draft law 11090. This will allow the budget to be filled at new rates from the first days of the new year. In addition, the failure of the draft law now next year will provide his opponents have new arguments – “tax legislation should be predictable”, “tax changes cannot be made on the fly within the year” and the like mantras,” Zahorodnyi warned about the inadmissibility of postponing the vote on raising excise tax rates.
He called on the deputies to ignore the draft law spam and pretend discussion, so that the legislators do not become hostages of the manipulations of tobacco corporations, and the budget receives the necessary funds from the increase in excise taxes.
“Some issues are important in details. But they are not at all fundamental to the main essence of the legislative initiative of the Ministry of Finance: excise tax rates must increase to fill the budget. However, corporations use second- and even third-order insignificant details to confuse the situation. Meanwhile, Ukraine will lose time when the budget can already be filled with excise taxes at new increased rates. But Ukraine cannot lose either time or money, because otherwise we will lose funding for the army and defense,” the expert emphasized.