Romanian President Klaus Iohannis has signed of the law regarding certain measures to strengthen the capacity to combat tax evasion.
The legislative act decriminalizes tax evasion offenses with a prejudice of less than one million euros, if it is fully covered, plus 15%.
On December 19, 2023, the Chamber of Deputies adopted decisively the project initiated by the leaders of the government coalition, Marcel Ciolacu and Nicolae Ciucă, which amends Law no. 241/2005 for the prevention and combating of tax evasion.
The law was challenged at the Constitutional Court by the Opposition, but on March 19, the Constitutional Court and ruled that the legislative act is constitutional.
According to the new provisions in the this law, failure to withhold taxes and/or contributions will constitute an offense punishable by imprisonment from 1 to 5 years or a fine.
Acts of tax evasion will be offenses and will be punished with "imprisonment from 3 to 10 years and the prohibition of certain rights or with a fine for the following acts committed in order to evade fiscal obligations: highlighting in the accounting records, in the electronic invoice, or in other legal documents expenses that do not have real operations as a basis or highlighting other fictitious operations; altering, destroying, or concealing accounting records, memories of electronic fiscal cash registers or other means of data storage, including electronic; keeping double accounting records using written documents or other means of data storage, including electronic ones," according to the legislative act.
The same penalty will apply for "the taxpayer's bad-faith use of the national system for electronic invoicing RO e-Invoice, in order to create the appearance of legality of fictitious operations or to conceal the actual transactional flow of goods/services; using electronic fiscal cash registers that are not connected to the national system for monitoring and data fiscal monitoring, according to the law, or altering electronic fiscal cash registers to not transmit fiscal data or transmit unreal fiscal data."
Where is the decriminalization
In such offenses, "if within a maximum period of 30 days from the completion of the inspection carried out by the competent authorities, where a prejudice owed to the general consolidated budget of up to 1,000,000 euros is identified, the prejudice increased by 15% of its value, to which interest and penalties are added, is fully covered, through actual payment, the act is not punishable," the source cited further indicates.
In this situation, the competent authorities will not refer the case to the criminal prosecution authorities.
In the same offense cases, "if by the first trial date, the caused prejudice is fully covered, through actual payment, the legal limits of the penalty provided by law for the committed act are reduced by half."
"If the caused and recovered prejudice under these conditions is up to 1,000,000 euros, in the equivalent of the national currency, a fine may be imposed. If after the first trial date and until the final judgment of the case, the caused prejudice is fully covered, through actual payment, the legal limits of the penalty provided by law for the committed act are reduced by one-third," as mentioned by the cited source.
The law also states that, in the case of committing these offenses "causing a prejudice not exceeding 1,000,000 euros, in the equivalent of the national currency, if during the criminal investigation, the caused prejudice increased by 25% of its value, to which interest and penalties are added, is fully covered, through actual payment, the act is not punishable."