State should make effort to return vehicle tax by year's end, says FinMin Teodorovici

The state should make efforts to return, by the end of the year, the sums paid for the vehicle taxes to those entitled, Minister of Finance Eugen Teodorovici considers. 

"31 August was the deadline for submitting the refund requests. I think that since we allocated money at the rectification, about 500 million extra lei for this payment, we could make an effort to pay, by the end of the year, everything we have to pay," Eugen Teodorovici told public TV station TVR1 on Tuesday. 

Eugen Teodorovici also said that he had discussed with Gratiela Gavrilescu, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Environment, a proposal on "a very good option" in terms of environmental tax. 

The auto charge for first-registration vehicles was introduced for the first time on 1 January, 2007, immediately after Romania's accession to the European Union. It underwent numerous changes until 2012 when the charge was suspended until the end of the same year, and the people who had already paid were to get the money back. 

Environment Minister Gratiela Gavrilescu recently said that the final form of a new pollution tax would be found by the end of 2018, and from the beginning of next year they will know exactly what needs to be done, maybe with a transitional period until 31 March, 2019.