Deloitte: Romania lagging behind when it comes to digitalisation of fiscal administration

While most European countries are conducting a significant share of their administrative and fiscal procedures by means of online tools, conducting E-audits and extracting added value from user generated data, Romania is lagging behind, a survey by Deloitte shows.

When it comes to implementing online tools, Austria, Lithuania, Slovenia, Hungary and Poland, which have implemented both the Standard Audit File for Tax (SAF-T), as well as E-reporting functions, are leading the way when it comes to digitalisation. Other five European countries, such as Luxembourg, France, Germany, Greece and the Netherlands, have implemented the SAFT-T, and Croatia, Italy, the Czech Republic, Spain and Estonia are using E-reporting. All other European countries, except for Romania, Bulgaria and Malta, have enabled the E-audit.

SAF-T, a standard electronic format, was initiated by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), mainly to help tax authorities carry out tax inspections more effectively, making it easier to identify the main areas of non-compliance in reporting obligations tax. SAF-T was taken over by each state according to its own tax legislation, which is why the pace and mode of implementation are different.

“The trend towards digitisation 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, said Ramona Trusculescu, senior manager Deloitte Romania.

“From the experience of other states, the implementation of these systems is not without effort by companies, but it would be a general effort, made once, with long-term advantages. There have been official declarations in the past years regarding the reduction of tax evasion, we should take over the recipes that proved efficient in other countries, especially those around us, instead of reinventing the wheel by coming up with questionable proposals, such as the VAT split payment or a VAT recording mechanism that is at odds with EU legislation. We experimented with such methods in the past years, and the results failed to show, while tax evasion is just as big,” Vlad Boeriu, Deloitte Romania partner said.