VAT is one of the major sources of public revenues in Ukraine. In contrast to the majority of countries that administer VAT, the administration of this tax in Ukraine is problematic. The major problems are VAT refund debt, numerous tax exemptions and extremely low VAT compliance.
So far during the transition period, the Ukrainian steel industry appears to have been one of the industries favoured by the government.
With about 33 m tons of steel production Ukraine belongs to the group of the ten largest steel producers in the world. Ferrous metallurgy was the first branch of Ukrainian industry to regain growth after the start of transformation. Steel production grew continuously since 1995. After the record growth in 2000, growth of production declined to about 5% in 2001.
This paper considers different kinds of implicit subsidies to the economy, such as privileged taxation, various non-payments, non-monetary transactions, etc.