Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada has passed at first reading amendments to the Tax Code of Ukraine ensuring the balance of budget revenue in 2018. The amendments include the increase in the excise duties for tobacco by 29.7%, environment tax rates by 11.2% and royalty (apart from production of extractable resources) by 16.8%.

An Interfax-Ukraine correspondent reported that a total of 260 lawmakers backed bill No. 6776-d on Tuesday.

According to an explanatory note to the document, the indexation corresponds to the forecast growth of the consumer price and industrial price indexes.

The bill envisages the gradual increase of the specific excise rate for tobacco and the minimum excise duty until 2025, namely by 29.7% in 2018, and next years – by 20% to the level equivalent to EUR 90 per 1,000 cigarettes.

Today, the minimum excise duty for cigarettes in Ukraine is EUR 20 (UAH 596.05) per 1,000 cigarettes.

According to the document, the adoption of the bill would increase revenues of the Ukrainian national budget, in particular, general revenue from the introduction of these requirements in 2018 would total UAH 12.46 billion, including UAH 11.74 billion from excise duties for tobacco.

The lawmakers decided not to increase the excise duties for alcohol and beer and royalty for the use of radio frequency (RF) spectrum, taking into account the fact that in the past years these rates were increased many times, and in 2018, UAH 6.3 billion would be injected into the budget from tenders to sell 4G communication licenses.