In order to discourage the practice of informal wages, corruption must be tackled first, especially among authorities in charge of controls and penalization of employees infringing the laws. This is the opinion of IDIS Viitorul expert Alexandru Fala about the Government’s plan of reducing informal economy. “Corruption and bribery- these are the things we must fight. Then, those who don’t pay taxes, who practice tax evasion and other fraud schemes will be effectively punished”, Fala told Info-Prim Neo. He admits that higher fines for employers and employees involved in such practices would have a certain effect, but doubts the informal wages would disappear. “Let’s say that someone from the Fiscal Inspectorate or other organization comes to check. The inspector will discover violations in the wage bill. Then the inspector will be bribed and that’s it. The problem is that our institutions are corrupt and even if we apply harsher penalties, it doesn’t mean corruption acts will cease to happen”, the expert said. According to him, a better solution would be to improve the economic environment. “For example, we could reduce some taxes, let’s say- classic taxes, when licenses are bought and so on. Improving the business environment also means fighting corruption and diminishing the administrative load, the bunch of bureaucratic procedures. Only then tax evasion will drop and wages will be paid officially”, the IDIS expert said. Alexandru Fala thinks that unruly companies must be punished, but those which are obliged by various circumstances to practice such schemes must be provided with proper economic conditions and then results would come. “Measures, it’s a good thing they are written, but they must be fully applied and it’s unlikely this will happen. It depends on the ethics and common sense of the people who will perform the controls”, stressed Fala. The Government approved the Plan of actions for reducing the practice of informal wages and employment on June 22. The plan stipulates the perfection of employment monitoring and records, the intensification of controls in order to discover tax evasion schemes and to fight informal employment, policies of improving employees’ legal literacy. The proposed increased fines for persons in charge vary between 300 and 500 conventional units for each employee that receives informal wages. Moreover, the workers accepting such payments should be fined as well.