In 2023, it is planned to make changes to the Fiscal Code, which is being developed by the Ministry of Finance. It is about the transposition of the directive on VAT, as well as about changes in the excise duty on alcohol and natural gas.

Draft amendments to VAT and excise tax – click to open

1. The bill provides for the possibility of adjusting the VAT originally collected by taxpayers for all discounts granted subsequently, regardless of whether they are provided directly to customers or through other price reduction mechanisms.

There will also be a centralizing document on the basis of which taxpayers will be able to adjust the VAT tax base for discounts that are not provided directly to customers.

This change will cause an impact estimated by pharmaceutical companies to be -290 million lei in 2023, respectively:

– the negative impact on VAT revenues as a result of the adjustment of the VAT tax base for the amount representing “Income from the contribution to medicinal products financed from the unified National Medical Social Insurance Fund and from the budget of the Ministry of Health” is estimated at -183 million lei , relating to 2023;

– the negative impact on VAT revenues as a result of the adjustment of the VAT tax base with the amount representing “Revenues from the contribution due under cost-volume/cost-volume-result contracts” is estimated at -107 million lei.

“Regarding the additional negative impact of other categories of taxpayers, except for pharmaceutical companies, no database was found that would allow for an assessment,” the Ministry of Finance notes.

2. Records of payments and beneficiaries

The draft envisages the introduction of obligations for payment service providers for which Romania is the Member State of origin, respectively the receiving Member State, to keep records of payments and beneficiaries of payments to allow the competent authorities to carry out checks in order to combat VAT fraud, in situations where two conditions are met

• payments are cross-border in nature

• exceeded the limit of 25 international payments to one recipient during a calendar quarter.

A payment will be considered cross-border if the payer’s payment service provider is located in a Member State and the payee’s payment service provider is located in another Member State in a third territory or third country.

In a situation where, for a particular payment, at least one of the payee’s payment service providers is located in a Member State, the obligation to keep records related to cross-border payments rests with the payee’s payment service provider.

In a situation where, for a given payment, none of the payee’s payment service providers is located in a Member State, the obligation to keep records related to cross-border payments rests with the payer’s payment service provider.

3. VAT: clarification of the submission deadline

Taking into account the recommendations of the European Commission in the VAT Directive on the Single European Window, the project provides for clarification of the deadline for submitting special declarations related to special regimes, with a direct reference to the last calendar day of the month, even if it is a non-working day.

4. Excise duty on alcohol

The Ministry proposes to cancel the clause, according to which the annual update of the beer excise tax was limited to an annual percentage, which should have been established by October 31, 2023, with application from 2024.

The problem would be, according to the Ministry, that an error crept into the parliament during the adoption of the Decree on tax increases, which will lead to “fiscal unpredictability and is discriminatory in relation to the general rule for updating the excise tax level.” duties on products included in the group of alcohol and alcoholic beverages”.

5. Similar provisions are introduced for natural gas consumption for technological purposes, as for electricity.

That is, there is no obligation to pay excise taxes.

It is about certain consumption limits determined by the National Energy Regulatory Authority (ANRE).

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