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Telecom.IT : Romania, in Europe’s gray area on the digitalisation map in tax administration
Along with Bulgaria and Malta, Romania is lagging behind the digitalisation processes of administrative-fiscal procedures, such as conducting electronic tax audits (E-audit), Deloitte Romania survey reveals quoted by romaniajournal.ro.
Thus, the most advanced countries in the digitalisation field in tax administration processes are Austria, Lithuania, Slovenia, Hungary, Portugal and Poland, which have implemented both Standard Audit File for Tax (SAF-T) and E-reporting (electronic reporting of documents such as invoices, balance, etc.).
According to Deloitte, other five countries (Luxembourg, France, Germany, Greece and the Netherlands) have implemented only SAF-T, while Croatia, Italy, the Czech Republic, Spain and Estonia use only E-reporting.
“In Romania only the electronic submission of documents is possible. Legislation also provides for electronic controls, but in practice the traditional control methods are used to check documents on paper. Checks and electronic reporting would help the taxpayer have a more detailed picture of areas of non-compliance and evasion. This would turn into an advantage for the business environment: a better collection of existing taxes that would lower the pressure of a possible tax hike that was recently discussed. Unfortunately, we see that the World Bank-funded upgrading program is blocked, at least momentarily,”Vlad Boeriu, Deloitte Romania Partner explained.
He added that Bulgaria, even though it does not stand not much better than Romania in terms of electronic reporting and verification, has successfully completed a program with the World Bank, succeeding in increasing its VAT compliance rate from 77 percent to 92 percent, comparable to the developed countries
In turn, Ramona Trusculescu, Senior Manager Deloitte Romania, pointed out that the digitalisation trend of business processes, that tax authorities around the world have understood, comes to the benefit both companies and national governments because it makes processes automated, lowering costs and bringing more transparency and certainty to the authorities.