Changing VAT payment method is possible and necessary

The lack of an efficient legislative framework is one of the causes obstructing the Main State Tax Inspectorate (MSTI) to sanction ghost firms and eradicate this phenomenon. Although the Court of Accounts (CC) has repeatedly recommended, in its reports, the elaboration and adoption of an amendment bill in this sense, things did not progress, mentions the audit Report on MSTI’s public income management for 2012. “However, the list of ghost firms registered to the MSTI informational monitoring system continues to grow. 1,320 businesses were added to this list since 2003 till present. In 2011, 36 ghost firms were added, 86% of which are from Chisinau. The losses they have caused to the Budget are very large, specified Tudor Suhan, CC department head, who presented the audit Report. He said that although in 2011 the number of ghost firms has fallen relative to 2010 (63 firms), the loss caused to the Budget is greater, namely 287 million lei, compared to 263 million lei in 2010. Gheorghe Cojocaru, deputy chief of the Main State Tax Inspectorate, stated that amendment bill is being elaborated. This bill will propose inverse taxation, i.e. changing the subject of taxation from the shipper to the buyer. In this case, the buying – VAT paying – firms, will VAT transfer along with the payment for the merchandise. In his opinion, after this amendment, the tax will not applied to all types of shipments, but only to those that carry some risk of fiscal evasion, such as shipments of recycled production goods, agricultural production goods, goods set as collateral, and other cases.