The European Commission needs further clarification from the Ministry of Finance before responding to the Romanian authorities on how the solidarity tax is applied, the EC sent Profit.ro.
The Commission said at the end of January that it needed more information to understand the fiscal case brought by the Romanian side, and the new response shows that the two sides are still at the stage of technical discussions. The consultation is important to determine the application of the joint and several contribution also in the case of OMV Petrom, a company which has announced that, according to its own interpretation of its financial statements, it will not have to pay. The case, a complex tax case to be opened by European authorities, has been highly politicized in recent weeks.
An official from the Tax and Customs Union Directorate-General (TAXUD) will arrive in Bucharest in mid-March to discuss a wider range of EU tax policy issues with the Romanian authorities, but the visit is not “specifically related to EU solidarity or energy policy contributions, and in this In this case, the technical teams of the Commission and Romania are in contact to ensure the proper application of the Regulation,” said the EU Executive Director.
The Ministry of Finance hopes to receive an answer to the third question sent to the Commission earlier than a month before the visit of the European official. While the first two questions concerned the implementation of the regulation and the Commission considered that it had been correctly transposed into national law, the third question concerned whether OMV Petrom would pay the tax or not.
The Ministry of Finance and the Prime Minister know that OMV Petrom does not have the right to pay solidarity tax because that is how the decree was written. An ANAF audit of companies in the market showed just that.
The European Commission told them the same thing. The Government is now relying on Parliament to amend the decree.
At the same time, it is not clear how the experts of the Ministry of Finance calculated the impact on the budget this year. They estimated that the state would collect 3.9 billion lei from the solidarity tax “based on the average annual taxable profit for the years 2018-2021 obtained by the main taxpayers operating in the crude oil, natural gas, coal and oil refining sectors.”
In other words, they miscalculated. At the moment, no one has guessed how the regulatory act will be developed.
Source: Hot News
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