Suppliers of ground drones for the Defense Forces will be exempt from VAT – The Rada adopted the bill
The Verkhovna Rada adopted bill No. 15259 aimed at strengthening the provision of the Defense Forces with ground unmanned systems for transporting ammunition, evacuating the wounded, and conducting reconnaissance. The decision was supported by 294 deputies.
The document provides for exemption from value-added tax on operations involving the supply of ground unmanned systems on the territory of Ukraine.
Thus, tax conditions are introduced to facilitate the supply and implementation of robotic platforms for defense needs, in particular for logistical tasks, evacuation operations, and reconnaissance missions.
As previously reported by the "Judicial and Legal Newspaper", the bill provides for an addition to subsection 2 of section XX "Transitional Provisions" of the Tax Code of Ukraine with a new point establishing that temporarily, until the termination or cancellation of martial law, operations involving the supply of ground unmanned systems on the customs territory of Ukraine are exempt from VAT.
The benefit will apply to equipment classified under commodity groups 84, 85, 87, 90, 93 according to the Ukrainian Classification of Goods for Foreign Economic Activity, provided that specified criteria are met.
In particular, the VAT exemption will apply in cases where:
- the supply is carried out under state contracts (agreements) for defense procurement;
- the final recipient is designated entities of the security and defense sector – including the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, the Armed Forces of Ukraine, other military formations, law enforcement agencies, volunteer territorial community formations, as well as other structures involved in ensuring national security and repelling the armed aggression of the Russian Federation.
Also, recipients may include enterprises that are contractors or co-contractors of state defense contracts.
If the bill is adopted, its impact will primarily be budgetary-economic and organizational. The initiators believe that the cancellation of VAT on the supply of ground robotic complexes will reduce the final cost of such purchases for the state, and therefore – with the same budget resources, a larger quantity of equipment can be purchased. This should contribute to scaling up the provision of robotic units, which are already used to perform logistical, reconnaissance, and evacuation tasks in the combat zone.
At the same time, there are risks in this model. Primarily, it concerns the possible reduction of tax revenues to the budget, although this is explained by the defense nature of the purchases. In a broader context, this affects the overall system of VAT revenues.
It also remains important to control that the benefit is applied exclusively to defense contracts and does not go beyond the defined circle of recipients.
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