The governing program targets, between 2013 and 2016, to cut the sales tax to 19%, social contributions by 5 percentage points, the sales tax for the basic food products to 9% and also reduce parafiscal taxes to half. The new program will also introduce differentiated tax quotas of 8%, 12% and 16% on salary income, which will be set based on income charts.
The program also aims to increase the deductibility of costs with research and development (R&D) activities, from 20% to 50%, and to provide tax exemptions, for a five-year period, on dividends reinvested in technological equipment and R&D.
Moreover, the new Government vies to stimulate the business environment for further macroeconomic stability by simplifying procedures and reducing red tape for small businesses.
The Executive also plans to speed up the absorption of European Union funds by creating a central body tasked with coordinating management authorities, and by simplifying and unifying the legislative framework.
The new Cabinet also plans to adopt a new law regulating small- and medium-sized enterprises, which will transpose the Small Business Act (SBA) into Romanian legislation.
The new governing program also includes several macroeconomic scenarios forecasting an economic growth of 2% in 2013, 3% in 2014, 3.3% in 2015 and 3.5% in 2015. The inflation rate for the next four years is seen at 3.5% in 2013, 3% in 2014, 2.5% in 2015 and 2.3% in 2016.