Party of Regions MPs propose to introduce a luxury tax.
According to Delo daily (#215 of November 24, 2008), the respective draft law has already been registered in parliament.
The authors of the draft law are MPs Yuri Boyko, Hanna German, and Yuri Myroshnychenko (the Party of Regions’ faction).
The draft law reads that “commodities and services exceeding by 100 and times the value of the same commodities of an average price, are regarded as luxury”. For instance, a car at the price of U.S. $20 thousand is considered a vehicle, and at U.S. $2 million – a luxury. Draft law authors propose to introduce a tax on such commodities at 100% of their cost.
At the same time, MPs are not afraid that sellers will deliberately lower prices by 1-2% to take the commodity out of the law effect. MPs believe, everybody knows quite well the real cost of luxuries.
Many MPs have criticized the draft law of their colleagues. For instance, Our Ukraine – People’s Self-Defense MP Ksenia Lyapina claimed that there is no such notion as “average cost of a commodity”.
“I do not understand why Yanukovych hates so much his ostrich-leather shoes. Because the 100% tax must be for sure levied from them!”, BYuT faction MP Serhiy Teryokhin commented on the idea. According to him, nobody can specify the base and criteria of the law on luxury. “It’s nothing but populism”, the MP stressed.
