For Ukrainians, purchasing goods from abroad will become more difficult, but not until 2019.
The controversial bill was approved on Dec. 7.
Lawmakers, however, have put off the initiative until Jan. 1 of next year. The new rule will reduce the number of tax-free individual shipments of goods through postal services to no more than three packages per month with a total value of over 150 euros. A fourth parcel would be taxed with a 20-percent value-added tax, 10 percent import duty tax and an excise tax.
According to the GfK market research consultancy, in 2017 Ukrainians received on average of 13 packages from abroad, mostly filled with clothes, shoes, smartphones, and electronic gadgets.
On Dec. 30 President Petro Poroshenko signed the law stipulating the new parcel taxation rules.
Parts of the law, however, are already effective starting since Jan. 1. Goods brought into Ukraine through hand and checked-in baggage that are worth over 150 euros and over 50 kilograms are taxed. The person has to leave Ukraine for more than 24 hours and enter the country no more than once during 72 hours. In airports, baggage that is worth more than 1,000 euros is also taxed.
Boryspil International Airport’s press service said that they cannot comment on the changes in luggage taxation and whether it will benefit the passengers or reduce smuggling of goods because they still have not seen the document.
There are significant problems with the implementation of the law.
The state postal service Ukrposhta opposes the amendments, saying they will be ineffective and hard to implement. Currently, there’s no way to track how many packages have been delivered to a particular address or a person.
Tracking the numbers of packages delivered to individuals per month would require the use of individual taxpayer numbers. Ukrposhta estimates that building an IT system to store the personal data and registration numbers of private individual importers would cost Hr 150 million ($5.5 million).
