Approaching “industrial visa-free travel”

They will bring the labor market out of the shadows

Excessive and complex reporting needs to be simplified

Remote work did not take root

Production of furniture fabrics begins

Everything that happened last week in Ukraine and the world and that is relevant to the furniture maker, read in our digest:

1. The previous mission of the European Union, after seven months of work in Ukraine, presented a final report on the country’s readiness for the ACAA Agreement (agreement on conformity assessment and acceptability of industrial products) – the so-called “industrial visa waiver”.

It should be reminded that the essence of “industrial visa-free” is that products manufactured in Ukraine and covered by the ACAA Agreement will be properly labeled, and the relevant certificates for such products will be recognized in the European Union without additional requirements.

2. Ukrainian parliamentarians want to bring the labor market out of the shadows because now most employers pay their employees salaries in an envelope. That is a gray salary from which the state does not take taxes. People’s deputies have already submitted a bill to the Verkhovna Rada. In the proposed bill, they provide for increasing the limits for single taxpayers by 85 times the minimum wage for each staff unit that receives a salary greater than twice the minimum wage.

3. People’s Deputy Nina Yuzhanina will initiate the abolition of the unified reporting approved by the majority, which has greatly complicated the work of accountants.

Who cares about the May holidays, and accountants, unfortunately, have trouble filling out the unified reports on personal income tax, personal income tax, and SSC, which for the first quarter of 2021 they must submit no later than May 11. The problem is that the reporting form is too large and complex, which contains a main section and six appendices. To fill it is another test because the PIT and SSC tax base coincides only in terms of wages and not always. Therefore, the deputy emphasizes, it is quite obvious that after the end of the reporting period the unified reporting should be abolished and further such clumsy decisions should not be made without taking into account expert opinion and working out a new decision in detail.

4. Remote work has not taken root in Ukraine: more than 80% of employees go to work regularly or from time to time. During the year of the Covid-19 pandemic, top managers and owners of Ukrainian companies realized that remote work was not entirely inefficient. Only 13% of companies surveyed by Bitrix24 did not return to offices, while 47% switched to a hybrid model: employees go to work, but not every day. Most companies are preparing to return employees to offices.

The first months of remote work were received by the staff “with a bang”, but in six months it became clear that not everything is so simple: it is increasingly difficult to combine work, life and spend whole days with their families.  

5. Global Textile Alliance UA, a subsidiary of the Belgian group of companies Monks International, signed an agreement in Ternopil on a long-term lease of production facilities with an area of ​​7,000 square meters. m to create a plant for the production of furniture and interior fabrics, as well as the manufacture of mattresses for leading global brands. The first products will come off the assembly line in June-July this year and will be exported to more than 60 countries.