Customs Regulation in Ukraine in the Prewar and in the Wartime Periods

Abstract

The purpose of the study is to theoretically substantiate customs regulation, identify shortcomings in its functioning in the prewar and wartime periods, develop appropriate practical recommendations, search for alternatives to meet the demand for imported goods and services, as well as restore the customs and financial security of the country with the condition of ensuring global partnership in terms of implementing the seventeenth Sustainable Development Goal «Partnership for Sustainable Development». It is determined that customs regulation is a subsystem of the State regulation of foreign economic activity, which defines and controls the process of movement of goods and services across the customs border. An analysis of current trends, dynamics of customs security and its components in the plane of effective customs regulation and ensuring the customs interests of the country is carried out. The key indicators that determine the level of customs burden on the country’s economy have been calculated and analyzed. There is a negative trend in such indicators as: provision of customs payments to the revenues of the State budget of the country, provision of customs payments of tax revenues, fulfillment of planned indicators for customs payments. The significance of customs payments in the revenues and tax revenues of the State budget is irrefutable. A comparative analysis of the both prewar and wartime structure of customs payments is carried out. The dynamics of the volume of taxed imports and the tax burden on them in Ukraine during 2018–2023 are studied. The key trends of the studied indicators are declining. The largest decline is observed during the pandemic in 2020 and at the beginning of the ongoing war in 2022. The partnership relations between the State and business entities in the context of the issue of customs regulation through the introduction of a system of preferential taxation of imports during the wartime period are studied. A systematization of normative legal acts of 2022, which fixed preferential conditions for business entities, is carried out. The problems of customs regulation of the prewar period, which significantly affected its efficiency and functional capacity in the wartime period, are identified. Measures for further leveling of these problems with the aim of European integration are proposed.

Keywords

• customs regulation
• customs security
• financial security
• customs payments
• customs duties
• vat
• excise tax
• foreign economic activity operations
• sustainable development
• martial law
• sustainable development goals
• state partnership