Global income tax has Romanians confused

Romanians are not ready yet for the implementation of the global income tax, as they are not familiar with many of this law’s stipulations, according to a poll conducted by CURS upon request of Grey Bucharest, the Romanian subsidiary of the marketing, communications and advertisement agency Grey Worldwide.

People do not know yet which the taxable additional incomes are, what the deductions are and how many taxpayers have to submit income statements in compliance with this law.

The survey points out that although most people (74.3% of the respondents) have heard of the above-mentioned law, they do not know which income brackets, other than salaries, are included in the stipulations of the global income taxation law.

People believe that pupil or student premiums, allowances granted by the state to the children and unemployment benefits are taxable, whereas the law stipulates that these are not incomes subject to taxation.

According to the survey, even college graduates and employees are making this mistake, including in the category of taxable incomes those revenues that are not subject to taxation.

Deductions have stirred a great deal of confusion, as well. Respondents considered that some personal expenses (transportation or household maintenance expenses) are included in the category of costs that can be deducted from global income taxation.

Between 68.4% and 72.3% of respondents belonging to the active population answered “I do not know” to this question.

Between 37.7% and 48.4% of the respondents did not know what to answer to the following question: “Which are the tax payers that have to submit an income tax statement?”, which proves that Romanians are at a loss when it comes to global income tax stipulations.

To these added others who provided a wrong answer to the above-mentioned question, considering that incomes derived from copyrights and freelance activities are not included in the global tax statement. The poll was conducted in February on a segment comprised of 1,200 respondents.