Tension in Chop increases because of Lviv railway

Chop is a town of railway workers and Lviv railway is one of the oldest enterprises on which the town residents work. Structural subdivisions of the State territorial industrial union ‘Lviv Railway’ paid tax on personal income to the local budget for many years, including the beginning of 2012. The mentioned charges form nearly 40 percent of budget revenues, said a head of financial Chop executive committee administration Angelika Sechko.

However, the railroad enterprise partially ceased paying tax on personal income to local budget without significant explanations since the beginning of 2011, and stopped its paying at all since April 2012. At the same time, the Lviv Railway subdivisions continue to conduct the active business activities in Chop, but pay aforementioned tax at the place of registration. The shortfall of this tax led to the failure in the planned profitable part’s indexes to 1400000 hryvnia for January-May 2012, according to the Ukrainian Ministry of Finance verification of the Chop budget. Therefore, losses could be over three million hryvnia by the end of the year.  

Currently this problem is especially urgent, since the tax payment failure leads to the impossibility of paying wages to secondary schools’ teachers, pre-school institutions’ workers and public utilities’ services used by the town institutions.

According to the Council Secretary Oksana Feldii, Chop City Council has repeatedly sent letters to the relevant structures. At the last session of the City Council was considered the deputies request for appeal to a head of Transcarpathian Regional State Administration A. Ledyda, a chairman of Transcarpathian Regional Council I. Baloga, a head of STS in Transcarpathian region V. Ivancho, Transcarpathian Prosecutor’s Office head A. Petrunia, a general director of ‘Ukrzaliznytsia’ V. Kozak and a head of ‘Lviv Railway’ department B. Pikha with a request of resolving the issue of territorial tax payment on personal income, according to the current legislation. The responses received to the City Council address indicates that the issue still does not decide in favor of the community.

On this occasion, a City Mayor Galyna Tsar appealed to a head of Presidential Administration of Ukraine Liovochkin S. V., a Prime Minister of Ukraine Azarov M.Y., a Vice Prime Minister of Ukraine and a Minister of Infrastructure Kolesnikov B.V. This situation has led to an increase in social tension in the town of Chop.