A new tax law will come into force in Ukraine in 2026, which will increase the profit tax rate for banks to 50%. At the same time, a ban on taking into account losses from previous years when calculating taxes is established. The law was adopted by the Verkhovna Rada on December 3, 2025 (No. 4698-IX, draft law No. 14097).
The law provides that banks will pay income tax at an increased rate without the possibility of reducing the financial result by the amount of losses from previous periods. The authors of the document explain the need for such a step by the conditions of martial law, when ensuring financing for the security and defense sector becomes critically important. In 2023–2024, additional taxation of banks was already used as one of the mechanisms for financing military needs, however, in 2025 this practice was not used, and banks paid tax at a base rate of 25%.
As reported, in October 2025, while preparing the State Budget for 2026, legislators decided to additionally raise funds from the bank profit tax. It is expected that the new norm will allow replenishing the general fund of the state budget by approximately UAH 30 billion without an additional financial burden on the state budget.
The Chairman of the Parliamentary Committee on Finance, Tax and Customs Policy, Danylo Hetmantsev, the initiator of the tax increase, explains:
“This is not about ordinary business and not about citizens, but about banks that received record profits during wartime, thanks to high discount rates, transactions with government securities and the state policy of supporting financial stability”.
At the same time, the National Bank of Ukraine expresses concern. The regulator believes that a tax at the level of 50% may create risks for the liquidity of banks, especially state-owned ones, and require their recapitalization.
“This decision may indeed have a negative impact on the liquidity of the sector due to the need to divert a significant reserve of funds to pay the tax. There is also a risk that a number of banks, including state-owned ones, will not fulfill capitalization programs based on the results of the 2025 sustainability assessment and regulatory requirements within the framework of integration with the EU, which may lead to the need for recapitalization of individual state institutions at the expense of taxpayers”, – the NBU notes.
The regulator also recalls that banks have already paid an increased tax in 2023 (77 billion UAH) and 2024 (96 billion UAH), which provided a third of the state’s tax revenues.
“Now we generally consider this initiative dangerous, one that undermines trust in the tax system and will have serious consequences not only for banks”, – the NBU emphasizes.
