Deloitte Romania assisted the National Agency for Fiscal Administration (ANAF) in implementing the project "Increasing the efficiency of the fiscal control activity in Romania", carried out with the support of the European Commission – Directorate-General for Structural Reform Support (DG REFORM), during June 2022 and November 2023. The project, which is part of the digitalization process of the tax administration, aimed at meeting the commitments made by Romania through the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR) regarding the modernization of the tax control activity, in order to simplify this process, both for taxpayers and for ANAF, as well as to fight tax evasion and increase the tax revenues to the state budget.
The project, financed through the Technical Support Instrument, managed by DG REFORM, consisted primarily of amending the legislative, procedural, and methodological framework governing the tax control activity in Romania, in order to increase the share of desk audits, which are more efficient both in terms of time and costs, and thus free up resources which will be redirected towards targeted checks, based on the risk areas.
"We are glad that we were able to contribute to the implementation of this project, meant to modernize the tax administration system in Romania. As part of the project, we conducted a comparative analysis of the tax control activity in Romania and seven other countries in Europe, namely Denmark, the Netherlands, Ireland, Spain, Italy, Poland, and the Czech Republic, and found that the new paradigm, focused on voluntary compliance, digital transformation, and a better relationship between tax administration and taxpayers represent the main trends in modern tax administrations. Romania has made important steps and follows a trend of alignment to international best practices, but the process of modernization and digitization is to be long, even permanent. Consequently, the completion of this project is a step towards modernizing the tax control activity, but it represents only one stage of the reform, which is a comprehensive process and must continue with the implementation of a modern integrated risk management system, developed in accordance with international best practices. However, this is a distinct, extremely complex project to be implemented in the future," said Dan Badin, Tax Partner, Deloitte Romania, the project coordinator.
The Deloitte multidisciplinary team provided tax and legal assistance to ANAF throughout the project and was made of Vlad Boeriu, Tax and Legal Partner-in-Charge, Dan Badin and Raluca Bontas, Tax Partners, Mihaela Popescu-Ichim and Monica Țariuc, Directors, Anca Ghizdavu, Senior Manager, Alexandru Rotariu, Senior Consultant, and tax lawyers Bogdan Marculeț, Senior Managing Associate, Stefan Mihărtescu and Cătălin Chibzui, Managing Associates, and Tatiana Milu, Associate, Reff & Associates | Deloitte Legal.
Specifically, as part of this project, Deloitte Romania experts drafted proposals to amend the primary and secondary legislation on tax controls, in order to align the existing legislative framework with the objectives of the reform in the tax control activity. These proposals mainly targeted measures to encourage voluntary compliance of individuals and legal entities, desk audits and targeted tax checks, remote communication during tax controls, enhancing the regulations for carrying out documentary checks, but also legislative repositioning of anti-fraud control in the context of the Fiscal Procedure Code. Following the typical institutional approval process, the Government Emergency Ordinance 188/2022 amending the Fiscal Procedure Code was adopted and issued in December 2022, pursuant to the proposals and the recommendations made during this project.
In addition, a new tax control manual was drafted within the project and published on anaf.ro, so that taxpayers can also consult it. At the same time, a set of performance indicators was defined in order to monitor the evolution of the reform process of the tax control activity, and a future action plan was prepared for the period 2024-2025, to continue the steps to update legislation, digitize and improve resource management. As a last significant step, the project included training sessions for a large number of ANAF trainers, in order to disseminate within the institution the information on the reform project and on the amendments regarding the legislative and methodological framework in the field of tax control, which occurred as a result of this project.
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