Viktoriya Fomenko gave lectures at Legal High School

On January 2018 in Kyiv, the education project Legal High School started having the aim to upgrade qualification of the legal practitioners and students from the law faculties. Understanding the necessity to make the education as much affordable as possible and the education process more effective, to increase the level of legal education in the country, the organizers of the event gathered the best lecturers among which were the heads of the legal departments of the large companies, partners of the leading law firms, judges and scientists.

Viktoriya Fomenko, Counsel and Head of Tax and Customs Practice at INTEGRTIES, shared her experience with the audience of the Tax Practice School of Legal High School, telling them about the principles of challenging decisions of the tax authorities though the administrative procedure. She mentioned that the administrative challenging procedure consisted of three stages, then from two stages in the past. Nowadays it consists of one stage that gives 60 days maximum to consider the case (the State Fiscal Service of Ukraine should consider the case within 20 days but this term can be prolonged up to 60 days).

Other innovations mostly deal with the taxpayers rights. For instance, previously they did not have an opportunity to review the materials of the tax audit and now they have it and the taxpayers should use it. Also, the positive innovation is the possibility for technical recording of the hearing that is very important when the consideration of the appeal happens thought the public hearing and the taxpayer wants to attract the mass media.

During another lecture Viktoriya Fomenko using real cases she showed how the legal proceedings in different instances went and offered to analyze the current case that was considering at the court at that moment. The participants were proposed to define which evidence the plaintiff should submit and to analyze how this evidence were supposed to affect the decision of the court.

In another lecture, she analyzed the tax aspects related to the disclosure of information about the beneficial owners including the approaches that the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has to this issue, as well as told about the recent court practice with respect to this issue.