Baltic States – CIS, Estonia, Financial Services, Legislation, Lithuania, Ukraine

Ukraine's Finance Minister Oleksandr Danyliuk said that the decision made in December to place these nations on the list of countries transactions with whose residents are supervised by Ukraine for transfer pricing purposes was made without agreeing the step with the partner countries, and now the government and the Finance Ministry will take two months for consultations.

"In some countries there are requirements in their legislation saying that money from Ukraine can be removed at a zero rate," the finance minister said.

At the end of 2017, the Ukrainian government put Estonia, Latvia, Iran, Cuba, Laos, Lebanon, Malta, Morocco, Monaco, the UAE, Singapore, Georgia and Hungary on the list of countries transactions with whose residents are subject to control under the Transfer Pricing Law. The list also included Guadeloupe, Guatemala, French Guiana, the Commonwealth of Dominica, the Dominican Republic, Mauritius, and the Independent State of Samoa. The total number of countries on the list increased from 65 to 85.

The ministry explained that the enlargement of the list was connected with changes in the criteria for compiling the list. The list was compiled of states and territories where the corporate profit tax rate is five or more percentage points lower than in Ukraine, that is, below 13 percent, states with which Ukraine has not yet agreed on exchange of information, and states whose authorities do not provide fiscal information to the Ukrainian state fiscal service on time and in full.

The decision became effective on Jan. 1, 2018 and prompted protests from Latvia and Estonia, which tax corporate profits when they are taken out of a business as dividend.