Ukraine's IMF programme: the tax, customs and governance benchmarks explained

Ukraine's IMF-supported programme sets out a dense list of tax, customs and governance measures, several of them in fields the EU has just opened for negotiation. The IMF Executive Board completed the first review of the 48-month Extended Fund Facility arrangement on 20 July 2026, releasing SDR 503 million, or about US$690 million, and bringing total disbursements to about SDR 1.6 billion (US$2.2 billion), according to the staff report. The Cabinet of Ministers said the next day that Ukraine met all quantitative performance criteria set for the end of March.

The report is less comfortable on the later test date. The net international reserves floor for end-June 2026 was missed by a significant margin, and the authorities asked for a waiver of nonobservance, as well as a waiver of applicability for the end-June fiscal criteria, because final data were not yet available, the IMF report says. It projects an overall 2026 deficit excluding budget support grants of UAH 2,148 billion, or 21 per cent of GDP, about 1.75 percentage points higher than at programme approval.

Revenue measures planned for 2027 total about 1.1 per cent of GDP in the report's table. They include a windfall tax on bank profits worth 0.3 per cent of GDP, which sets the profit tax rate at 50 per cent, alignment of fuel and tobacco excise with EU directives, also worth 0.3 per cent, a digital platforms tax and the removal of the VAT exemption on low-value postal imports, each worth 0.1 per cent, according to the report.

Tax: what is due and what slipped

Only the digital platforms tax, adopted in June 2026, was delivered from the first-quarter tax package. For the rest, the report proposes a revised sequence:

• removal of the VAT exemption on low-value postal imports by end-July 2026;
• a rise in the VAT refund audit threshold from UAH 100,000 to UAH 1 million by end-August 2026;
• submission to parliament of a narrower bill on transfer pricing and the EU-style interest limitation rule by end-August 2026, after the end-June benchmark was missed, with the controlled foreign company provision moved to a separate bill later in 2026;
• anti-avoidance rules for the simplified tax regime submitted by end-December 2026;
• enactment by April 2027 of the removal of the simplified-regime VAT exemption, effective 1 January 2028, one year later than previously agreed.

Customs and governance benchmarks

A new permanent head of customs was appointed with delay, and re-attestation of all customs officials is scheduled to begin in mid-2026, subject to securing funds, the report says. On state-owned banks, a revised nominations procedure for supervisory boards was adopted with delay against an end-February 2026 benchmark, the general strategy was finalised and is under staff assessment, and two banks are being prepared for sale. A continuous benchmark bars fiscal recapitalisation of non-systemic state-owned banks. Another benchmark, due by end-December 2026, requires an amendment to the organic law of the National Securities and Stock Market Commission to create a two-tier board and move responsibility for it from the President to the Cabinet.

The staff also record that the benchmark on introducing a risk-based system for verifying asset declarations, due by end-June 2026, was not met. They say the authorities remain committed to governance and anti-corruption reform, but that progress has slowed significantly in several areas because of institutional capacity constraints, uneven ownership and difficulty passing legislation, according to the report.

Why the EU talks matter for the programme

The staff say opening EU accession negotiations, particularly the fundamentals cluster, could help revive the reform agenda. On 13 October the EU went further and opened the clusters covering the internal market and competitiveness, including the taxation and customs union chapters, the Council of the EU said. The IMF report does not map its benchmarks to individual EU chapters, and the Council has not published the closing benchmarks in its press release.