According to Open4business, restricting access to information on the tax debts of specific sole proprietors deprives Ukrainian businesses of one of the tools for vetting potential business partners, says Opendatabot CEO Oleksiy Ivanikin.

According to the service, as of July 2026, approximately 1.5 million sole proprietors have tax debts, and the total amount of debt reaches 16.6 billion hryvnia.

At the same time, since the start of the full-scale war, the State Tax Service has not published a public list of specific individual entrepreneurs in debt, despite the fact that data from the Unified State Register and general statistics on tax arrears remain publicly available.

“It is difficult to justify this restriction on security grounds: information about an individual entrepreneur’s tax debt does not contain any defense-related or strategically important data,” Ivanikin stated.

In his view, transparency of information has direct economic significance.

“When information about debt is public, entrepreneurs have an additional incentive to pay it off, as it affects their reputation and the choice of business partners. Since the start of the war, businesses have lost one of the tools for vetting counterparties and cannot see whether a potential partner is paying taxes,” noted the CEO of Opendatabot.

The number of entrepreneurs with tax arrears has increased approximately 2.3-fold since the start of the full-scale invasion—by 840,000 people—and the total amount of arrears has risen by 9.6 billion hryvnia.

business partner debt Opendatabot sole proprietor tax

Last modified: 22 Серпня, 2026