Excessive taxation of “high” salaries is a bogus topic, as is the entire discussion of progressive taxation. First, circulating excessive taxation does not make economic or social sense: it will not bring revenues to the budget that would even partially solve the difficult deficit situation, nor will it create fairness among taxpayers if the threshold is set arbitrarily without any economic modeling for it justification. Secondly, progressive taxation cannot be introduced in the near future without a thorough reform of the tax administration, which under current conditions is not ready to process millions of declarations, as well as without researching the optimal options for taxation for the local economy. As the business environment has repeatedly stated, without a thorough analysis of the tax system, without a serious reform and without the introduction of technologies in tax administration, changes in taxation will not bring benefits.​

Any debate on future tax changes in Romania should have these goals in mind: increasing financial fairness and budget revenues by reforming the tax administration and analyzing legislation to increase the tax base. But these things are known at the government level, they are included in the PNRR in the section on fiscal reform, where there are stages and milestones to be met.

One of the steps taken by the PNRR is an analysis of the fiscal system conducted by the World Bank (WB). The report, compiled by an international institution, should be used in fiscal and budgetary policy decisions, as the PNRR does not contain specific measures to be taken by the government, but the goal it should achieve, i.e. increasing budget revenues by 3 percentage points of GDP by 2026 through tax reform systems. However, the PNRR provides for a deadline by which BM had to send the analysis document to the Romanian authorities, a deadline that has been met since the end of last year. There are four months left, and the report has not been officially released, but it appeared in the press, but the authorities did not deny it.

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The article is signed by Daniel Angel, partner and head of tax and legal consulting at PwC Romania

Article supported by PwC Romania