The Foreign Investors Council (FIC) yesterday severely criticised the fiscal policy embraced by Romanian authorities and the treatment foreign investors receive in Romania.
“Most of the times, the Romanian fiscal authorities adopt an aggressive attitude and approach when it comes to foreign investors,” Ruxandra Stan, executive manager of FIC, an organisation that includes 90 members, mostly multinational companies, with over 4 billion euro investments in Romania, yesterday stated.
“In many cases, fiscal controls or checks last too long and lack precise goals. When conducting investigations, the fiscal authorities most of the times ignore the content of a transaction and prefer to interpret the laws to the detriment of taxpayers instead,” Stan added.
Under the circumstances, the foreign investors say that a code of conduct should be set for fiscal authorities, which should clarify taxpayers’, as well as tax inspectors’ rights and obligations, and which should include a conflict-solving mechanism as an alternative to high-cost long terms issued by legal instances.
The Council also expressed its dissatisfaction with the fact that Romania has not published any medium and long-term fiscal strategy as have many European Union member countries.
“For instance, a fiscal strategy includes points of reference as to the level of taxes levied over the following 3-5 years for profit tax, VAT, income tax. Moreover, the Finance Ministry has not issued any clear statement with regard to the moment it will adopt OECD’s principles referring to taxation and to when it plans to rally to European Union’s taxation principles. If Romania puts in place a clear fiscal strategy, this will consolidate its reputation as a stable country, with a stable and predictable fiscal regime worth investing in,” FIC official also stated.
Foreign investors say that another issue they are faced with consists in the large delays in the refunding of VAT. They say that repayment is one year or more late, so that exporters are having liquidity problems.
“It is as if exporters were punished for their export operations because, though there are normative documents allowing a rapid reimbursement of VAT, these have not been implemented and taxpayers continue facing significant delays. Exporters are thus in a chronic VAT recovering position and the Government should rapidly put the new normative documents into effect so as to allow the timely reimbursement of VAT to the affected companies,” Ruxandra Stan said.
As regards the attraction of more foreign investments, FIC considers that securing a loyal competitive environment, i.e. enforcing the laws in a uniform and predictable manner, is more important than incentive granting. miruna.lebedencu@zf.ro