Bodies of self-organization of the population: getting taxes, paying taxes

Abstract

At present, the municipal reform is carried out in Ukraine. Ukrainian municipal legislation’s main drawback consists of its lack of details, when it comes about the local territorial community groups; very often they organize themselves in the house committees, street committees, block committees etc. According to the law, they are named “bodies of self-organization of population”. The Ukrainian Parliament has yet to clear a lot of provisions about these legal entities, including their funding and taxation. These provisions can be included either to the Tax Code of Ukraine or to the Law of Ukraine On Bodies of Self-organization of Population. The Parliament has adopted several previous laws. Some of the most recent examples include the 1998 Parliament Act on the General Meetings of the Territorial Communities and 1984 Law of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic On self-taxation of rural population. Therefore, the Parliament has not revised or reformed – for a long time. Ukrainian legal authors research mostly the constitutional and the civil law aspects of the bodies of self-organization of population. The authors conclude that Ukraine, to revive the bodies of self-organization of the population, needs changes in the legislation on the tax questions they are involved. As of the moment, they can organize self-taxation with a lot of difficulties and have to pay taxes as the typical non-governmental organizations. Therefore, it is necessary: firstly, to exclude the bodies of self-organization of the population from the subjects of taxation; secondly – to improve the norms about their material and financial basis in order to make them really financially independent from the local government bodies, thirdly – to revise the legislation on self-taxation in order to make it up-to-date and easy to follow. Such changes will also further develop the country’s local government system.