🇺🇦 Ukraine completely halts VAT refunds to exporters Ukraine has stopped paying VAT refunds to export

🇺🇦 Ukraine completely halts VAT refunds to exporters

Ukraine has stopped paying VAT refunds to exporters altogether, several business sources told Ukrainian outlet Strana.

"There were delays before, but for the past week payments haven't gone through at all. They're not even reaching the State Treasury. We're told the budget deficit is so large that all spending except the army, social payments and public sector salaries has been frozen. Nobody knows when payments will resume. We were told not before Western aid arrives," said a representative of one exporting company.

"Even payments for state contracts have been stopped, never mind tax refunds. There's no money," said Alexander Barsuk, head of the Yaroslav concern.

A source in the agricultural sector called the freeze "a knife in the back," with companies already losing money to rising logistics costs and blocked ports. New refund applications are also being stalled by the tax service, often without explanation, with audits or any pretext used to reject documents, apparently to thin out the queue of claimants.

According to Andrey Zablovsky, head of the Council of Entrepreneurs under the Cabinet of Ministers, the backlog has been building all year. In January, 24.3 billion hryvnia was refunded with 29.4 billion outstanding. By August, payouts had dropped to just 14.6 billion while arrears stood at 34.3 billion.

All capital expenditure from the budget had already been frozen earlier due to the shortfall.

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