Ukraine’s Parliament will consider draft Law 6696, aimed at canceling the re-registration of religious organizations and automatically entering them in the Register of non-profit institutions and organizations.
The Conciliation Council of the heads of factions and committees introduced this bill on the agenda of the Parliament on Tuesday, December 5, the Institute of Religious Freedom reports.
Co-authors of the bill, 16 of which are members of the Parliamentary Committee on Tax and Customs Policy, have declared the relevance of the proposed amendments in view of the special nature of religious organizations and their differences from other legal entities.
The inexpediency of re-registration has previously been mentioned by the All-Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organizations. The religious community expects the parliamentarians to have a positive vote on draft Law No. 6696, since the re-registration of each religious community is a long, expensive and inexpedient procedure. The believers are required to duplicate the rules of the Tax Code in their charters, which is illogical, because religious organizations can act solely as non-profit ones, and donations and other their revenues are not taxable in accordance with Article 18 of the Law of Ukraine “On Freedom of Conscience and Religious Organizations.”
The same day, the Parliament plans to consider draft Law No. 6642, which provides for the abolition of the requirement for notarization of the charters and minutes of the general meeting of religious organizations.
In addition, the bill stipulates that the administrative fee, which is currently 460 UAH, will not levied for state registration of changes in the information about religious organizations in the Unified State Register. These amendments are also relevant because at present, religious organizations are equated in the payment of administrative fees to commercial enterprises.
As reported, the initiators of draft Law 6696 were representatives of all parliamentary factions and groups, and experts of the Parliament and public organizations, the Ministry of Justice and the All-Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organizations participated in its elaboration.
The deadline for the re-registration of religious organizations is January 1, 2018. The Tax Code provides for the exclusion from the Register of those religious organizations that fail to undergo re-registration until that date, which entails the taxation of their donations in contravention of the Law “On Freedom of Conscience and Religious Organizations”.