Inequitable treatment of companies leads to tax evasion, State Tax Service head

The unconditional forgiving of the debts of the companies that resorted to tax evasion puts the disciplined taxpayers in an inequitable situation and leads to tax evasion, the head of the State Tax Service Nicolae Platon told a news conference on April 2. According to the data made public at the conference, debts of 4.3 billion lei to the national public budget had been forgiven as part of the fiscal amnesty in 2007. Even so, these companies' debts on December 31, 2009 totaled 1.05 billion lei, Info-Prim Neo reports. Nicolae Platon said that during the 100 days of work since his appointment, there was created a working group for diminishing the fiscal burden and improving the fiscal legislation, the methodology of inspecting companies was modified and progress was made in introducing the fast-tract tax return and electronic statement. He also said steps are taken to combat phantom companies, including the creation of a logistic and analytical section at the State Main Tax Inspectorate, which uses modern methods and instruments for combating tax evasion. Twenty-one phantom companies had been discovered during January-March this year. They caused damage to the state assessed at 11.3 million lei. Nicolae Platon said the State Main Tax Inspectorate submitted a number of proposals to the Ministry of Finance for improving the fiscal legislation, including introducing a common tax for the taxpayers working in road passenger transportation, public food and service sector and increasing the ceiling for being registered as payer of VAT – for obligatory registration to 1 million lei and for voluntary registration to 300,000 lei.