Fedia Kriukov says:
February 3, 2014 at 4:36 pm
Upon some further consideration, I can’t say that you’re entirely wrong. I added a column to my spreadsheet above, calculating “Tax per capita as % of GRP per capita”. As you can see, the East does not have the same tax burden as the Center (your theory that Ukrainian tax laws favor large businesses could account for that). But the West’s tax burden is still the lightest of all.
So to recap all of this:
1) The West is the poorest part of the country in terms of GRP per capita
2) The West pays the least amount of taxes per capita (naturally follows from (1))
3) The West has the lightest tax burden even in relation to its meager GRP per capita (just under that of the South)
4) The West is the most heavily subsidized part of the country
I think this should settle the East vs West debate.
One other note is that usually only the Lvov region is used to represent the West. However, while Lvov is the richest and most developed region of the West, it is only one of 7 western regions in that part of the country, and is not representative of their overall level. Even then, Lvov is merely on par with poorest regions of the rest of the country. There are very few regions outside of West Ukraine that are economically surpassed by Lvov.
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