The tax collection system is ultra-corrupt. There is protection at the local, central level, I don’t know, said lawyer Gabriel Birish, a former secretary of state at the Ministry of Finance.

“It’s hard for me to look at the fact that we’ve had ANAF chiefs accused of smuggling – we have two finance ministers in jail right now as we speak – our problem is that the wolves are the guardians of the flock,” – said Birish, during the conference organized by CursDeGuvernare.ro.

• “Romania included evasion in the list of threats to national security. This is a CSAT problem and nothing is being done. Nothing!”

“Besides eliminating serious fraud, reverse charge does something else: it eliminates most VAT refund claims. We have 50% of the inspection, as they say, not enough, busy with VAT refunds. We’ve created a system that not only loses us money from theft, but also costs us money to administer: a lot of money,” Birish explained.

According to the latest European Commission report, Romania is the worst in the European Union in terms of VAT collection deficit, which will be 36.7% in 2021 (being 0.5 percentage points lower than the previous year). In total, that’s about €9 billion that ANAF is not collecting (€8.996 billion to be exact).

Gabriel Birisch says he expects the VAT deficit to be €11 billion when the 2022 figures come out.