According to a government document, the battle plan also includes: e-commerce controls, to indentify the “fiscal risk” associated with legal or natural persons not declaring trader status; increasing the number of controls carried out by mobile teams on the field; developing software to monitor the movement of excisable goods for which excise duty collection is suspended, including movement inside the EU of goods with excise duties paid in the sender state.
Last year, tax regulator ANAF carried out a series of controls of individuals involved in real estate transactions with development land and new buildings in 2006-2008. The authority investigated 7,145 people who had made 85,442 transactions, worth a total 14.88 billion lei (EUR3.422 billion).
ANAF head Sorin Blejnar said at the time that the controls were not directed against individuals who had bought new buildings in good faith, but against people who had carried out real estate transactions for commercial purposes, without paying VAT.
Individuals who sell development land and new buildings are required to register for VAT purposes and pay VAT on the sale value to the state budget. However, people carrying out real estate transactions for personal purposes are exempt from paying VAT; this was used by many developers who registered the transactions as individuals, instead of companies. ANAF’s position is that an individual found to have engaged in commercial activities should no longer benefit from the VAT exemption.
Another anti-evasion measure approved by the Government last year was to charge natural persons whose real income exceeded their official amount by at least RON50,000 a tax of 16% levied on the difference between the two values. Although the Executive stated the measure would be implemented this year, no real results have been seen yet.
(EUR1=RON4.3479)