TAX NEWS - 2010

Romania Tax: Regulation of other measures for fighting tax evasion

During its session on May 30, 2010, Romanian Government adopted an emergency ordinance with respect to fighting tax evasion.   

According to the project of the emergency ordinance ("Project"), the amendment and/or supplementation of several legal norms are taken into account, among which Fiscal Code (briefly presented in the previous section), Customs Code, Fiscal Procedure Code, Companies' Law, Law no. 241/2005 for preventing and fighting tax evasion.

In what follows, we will briefly present some of the legislative proposals regarding Fiscal Procedure Code and Companies' Law.

Among the amendments and supplementations proposed to Government Ordinance no. 92/2003 regarding Fiscal Procedure Code, we mention:

- Introducing the joint liability with the debtor declared insolvent, for its outstanding payment obligations, for the following categories of persons:

     - the administrators who, during their mandate, have not fulfilled the legal obligation to ask the competent court of law to open the insolvency procedure, for the fiscal obligations related to the respective period and left unpaid at the date of having the insolvency state declared;

     - the administrators or any other persons who, with bad-faith, determined not declaring and/or not paying the fiscal obligations at the maturity date;

     - the administrators or any other persons who, with bad-faith, determined the recovery or reimbursement of some amounts of money from the consolidated general budget without them to be owed to the debtor.

- Introducing the obligation for the credit institutions to communicate, at the request of the fiscal bodies of the National Fiscal Administration Agency (ANAF), all the cash routing and/or the balances of the accounts opened with them, the identification data of the persons who hold signature right, as well as whether the debtor has safety boxes rented or not. It is worth mentioning the fact that the information obtained as such shall be used only with the scope of fulfilling the specific attributions of ANAF.

As regards Law no. 31/1990 regarding trading companies, the proposed legislative supplementations concern the transmission of shares. More specifically, the decision of the shareholders' meeting whereby the transmission of shares to third parties is approved, submitted with the trade registry office, is immediately transmitted electronically by the said institution to ANAF and to the county and Bucharest public finances general departments. Against the shareholders' decision, the social creditors and any other persons prejudiced through the decision may file an objection, the transmission of the shares operating, in the absence of the objection, at the expiry date of the legal term for objection, and in case of filing an objection, at the communication date of the decision of rejecting the objection.