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The Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Romania (CCIR) organized on October 31 this year the conference "Austerity measures vs. The business environment", during which, in the presence of representatives of entrepreneurs from Romania, as well as in that of specialists in the field, the effects of the fiscal "austerity" law, a normative act for which the Government recently assumed responsibility before Parliament and which will enter into force starting on November 1st, 2023.
"As the latest data from ANAF show us, from August of this year, the business environment brilliantly fulfilled its duty to the national budget. And we're not just talking about this year, this has been happening for a long time. Organizing the National Top of Companies, we have all these figures fresh in our memory. Thus, for the fiscal year 2022, 846,459 companies submitted their balance sheets, with more than 44 thousand companies more than in the previous year. But what is really spectacular, the turnover increased from 392 billion euros, as recorded in 2021, to 494 billion euros, in 2022, and the gross profit increased from 41.5, in 2021 ,, to 45.6 billion euros, in 2022. Considering all these figures, I do not understand why the Romanian State is punishing the business environment in this way, through the austerity law. The state should set an example of good practices, tidy up its garden, look more closely at the state companies that represent big holes in the budget. They stepped on the light bulb, not the tax-paying business environment. The fiscal measures assumed by the Government will have repercussions on the business environment, and here I am referring in particular to companies with a turnover of over 50 million euros, large companies that matter a lot for the Romanian economy. Some will break up the companies in order to reduce the taxed turnover by 1%, others will relocate their companies and this because the Romanian state easily pushes you to all kinds of tricks so that you can survive in the Romanian environment", said the president of the CCIR, Mr. Mihai Daraban.
"The most shocking of the provisions says that if you are one of the 15 million citizens who have money on them and the tax body found you, and the money has no identified source of provenance, a 70% tax is applied to that amount . We have in the Constitution art. 44 para. 8 which says that licit wealth is presumed and may be confiscated by the court, if it is found to be illicit. The idea of even retroactively taxing amounts that cannot be identified already exists in the Fiscal Code. The new law says that this 70% tax is applied to combat tax evasion, money laundering and corruption. No measure put into practice in 25 years has led to a decrease in tax evasion or a decrease in tax optimization. I would have expected the austerity law to introduce measures to increase VAT receipts. In reality, differentiated VAT rates have been introduced in unexpected areas, given the fact that the real estate market is declining. Unexpectedly, the VAT for festivals and traditional products rose from 5% to 9%. This measure seems like a sanction, a kind of excise tax to restrict the consumption of products of this kind. I draw attention to the fact that when the VAT changed from 19% to 22%, this was immediately seen in the economy, in 2010, when the largest number of bankruptcies was recorded", said lawyer Gheorghe Piperea.
