On 16 June 2010 in the Opera Hotel, authoritative charity foundations of Ukraine signed the Memorandum of Benefactors of Ukraine to support the draft laws "On Charity and Charitable Organizations" (No. 6343) and "On introduction of amendments to some laws of Ukraine (regarding the reduction of tax burden for charity aid recipients)" (No. 6344).

The managers of the following foundations signed the Memorandum: Rinat Akhmetov's Foundation for Development of Ukraine, East Europe Foundation, International Renaissance Foundation, Victor Pinchuk Foundation, Oleksandr Feldman Foundation, Ukraine 3000 International Charitable Foundation, Arseniy Yatseniuk’s Open Ukraine Foundation, Elena Franchuk ANTIAIDS Foundation, the Klitschko Brothers Fund, Caritas Ukraine International Charitable Foundation, Sviatoslav Vakarchuk’s People of the Future Foundation.

For the first time ever, the largest charitable foundations of Ukraine joined forces to simplify the registration and management procedures for charitable organizations; to improve the benefactors' supervision over the use of the provided assistance; to introduce the new charitable activity tools and ease the tax burden for charity aid recipients.

Anatoliy Zabolotny, Director, Rinat Akhmetov's Foundation for Development of Ukraine: "We always support the initiatives allowing to make our scope of activity progressive, open and efficient. We strongly feel the imperfection of the current laws. Recently we implemented a project that cost UAH 170,000.  The tax amounted to UAH 30,000. We can keep on covering such costs. But thinking broader, this amount of UAH 30,000 is enough to buy 3 hearing devices for 5-6-year-old children that really need to hear the world around them. Or this money can be spent to pay for the cerebral palsy treatment course in the special hospital for 5 children, or to buy medicines for 10 pensioners. It's different arithmetics making completely different results".

People's Deputies Oleksandr Feldman and Olesya Orobets, being among the draft submitters, made speeches at the Memorandum signing ceremony. Along with them, Yulia Novikova and Oleg Zarubinsky signed the draft laws.

Olesya Orobets, People's Deputy: "Taxing charitable activities is the same as taxing love or kindness, which is the cruellest thing in our taxation system. Politicians have to learn a lot from benefactors about how to serve people. In the meantime, we can help benefactors. What we can do is help them to do good easier, faster and oftener through promoting draft laws".

All the signers and people's deputies expressed their hope that the Verkhovna Rada would quit political disputes and join forces to support benefactors.

The text of the Memorandum will be sent to the Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada and to Mr. Yavorivsky, Chairman of the Committee on Culture and Spirituality.

By the way, after the ceremony it was reported that the VR Committee on Culture and Spirituality had unanimously supported the draft law "On introduction of amendments to some laws of Ukraine (regarding the reduction of tax burden for charity aid recipients)" (No. 6344 dd.26.04.2010) at its meeting.

The Memorandum is open for signing by all the interested benefactors.

The full text of the Memorandum is available here or on the website of Rinat Akhmetov’s Foundation for Development of Ukraine www.fdu.org.ua

16 /06/2010, 18:24
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