State owes $72m to taxpayers

The 2002 global income tax “affair” has ended in the obligation of the Finance Ministry to repay individual taxpayers 2,350bn ROL, that is no less than $72 million.

Out of this considerable debt, the Finance Ministry had paid just a little more than half (1,347bn ROL) until the beginning of this month, according to the data released by the National Tax Administration Agency. The delay is turning the over 1.6 million taxpayers into unwilling creditors of the State.

The Finance Ministry has and is still using this money, which the budget collected in advance throughout 2002 and had the opportunity to spend or make use of it as it saw fit, and will repay it “when it can”, i.e. after more than two years from the date it collected the money.

The amount the Exchequer had to repay as soon as it was done balancing the amounts paid as taxes in 2002 with the final taxes, is twice higher than the taxpayers’ debt to the budget, 1,264bn ROL.

This situation only serves to prove again, following the experience of the fiscal 2001, that the global taxation system for the individual incomes is flawed, starting from the setting of the five taxable income categories ranging between 18% to 40%. The Finance Ministry is seemingly not worried about these expenses, which add up to those for administrating the global income tax, with all its deductions and return filing obligations. All the more so since for the debts it has to repay for 2002, the Exchequer does not have to pay penalties like those it was quick to enforce on those that fell behind with their dues to the budget. razvan.voican@zf.ro