Many honest taxpayers are outraged by the Government’s decisions in recent years and wonder why they still pay taxes, that the results are not visible when it comes to the health care system, roads, public services in general. Well, they can do something along these lines, like a kind of tax rebellion: not paying taxes and at the same time benefiting from the tax measure at a not very high price, avoiding the foreclosure of the property and various accessories that are calculated to stay.

“There is something called ‘simplified planning.’ The simplified schedule allows all of us taxpayers to have access to it, whether we’re struggling or not. If we are regular taxpayers who have filed and paid our taxes by a certain point, this gap allows us to ask the IRS to pay our bill for a maximum of 12 months. It comes with no guarantees, complex processes, complex requests and very thick files. It’s true: we have costs of 7.3% per year, it’s interest,” said Theodore Arteni, head of Noerr’s tax practice, saying that his goal is not to cause a revolt, but to give ideas: “everyone continues to do what they want “.

7% is also the monetary policy rate of the BNR.

“No one follows us (if we use simplified planning – no). So, if we are the winners, we can get this scaling relatively easily,” he explained during the TaxEU forum.

Question: What if the big companies decided to switch to simplified planning in protest?

Speaking of “how bad multinational corporations are” in Romania, there are several reports from ANAF: December report for the third quarter of 2023. In 2023, there were 1,993,919 active taxpayers in Romania. Of them, 3,280 remained taxpayers on the lists. Large taxpayers have a weight of 0.16% of the total number of taxpayers,” said Arteni.

0.16% accounted for 50% of revenues collected in 2022 and up to 50% in the third quarter of 2023, he said.

“What if the 0.16% of taxpayers who pay 50% of the revenue collected by ANAF thought about making a 12-month claim? I’ll let you think about it,” Rep. Noerr said.

Dragos Doros (former chairman of ANAF), tax partner of Eversheds Sutherland Romania, said: “The idea is that we actually, in a healthy economy, want to have big and powerful taxpayers, because from an administrative point of view, I who go to hunting I don’t want to hunt 10 rabbits. I want to hunt a wild boar. It’s much easier. I want as many wild pigs as possible, not a million rabbits.’

For his part, Theodore Arteni clarified that it seems to him that there is a strong imbalance between measures to increase budget revenues and measures to reduce expenses.

“It seems to me to be such a big and obvious imbalance,” Arteni confirmed.

Dragos Doros also said that at the same time he sees a waste of public money.

Why do we pay taxes? Because of the fear of ANAF? For the state to work?

“Why do we pay new taxes? So that the ANAF doesn’t come and execute us? No! So we are afraid if we don’t pay. Answer: For the state to function. This is how we have roads, police, army, justice, health. That’s why we pay taxes,” said Dragosh Dorosh.

He recalled that when he was working in the Ministry of Finance, he was in Brussels and talked to some of his colleagues who are the engines of tax payment in their jurisdictions.

“Is it the fear that ANAF will execute you? No! This is not the first. The first driver of tax payment is the citizen’s conviction that the money he pays is used as it should be. The moment a citizen is convinced that his money is being spent correctly, he pays taxes. Secondly, he pays so that ANAF does not chase him,” explained the former head of the Ministry of Finance.

In this context, he also said: “There were several of us at the table, and one Swede said that in their country, if everyone knows each other on the street and everyone talks, and the neighbors find out that one of them has not paid, or from shows up with a boat or a car, they all sue him in the Fisc. There was also a guest from the Ministry of Jordan who said, “Well, with us, if someone on the street hasn’t paid their taxes, they go and ask them how they did it so they don’t pay either.” “