Tax office doesn"t believe in the "innocent until proven guilty" principle

Eugen Ionescu

The new fixed taxes proposed by Finance Minister Pogea are an open admission of the tax office"s inability to collect taxes. The Minister"s proposals imply that right now the payment of taxes is mostly optional instead of mandatory.

The Minister offered restaurants as an example of tax dodgers, that he claims are always crowded, but their tax returns show that they are losing money.

Not unreasonably, the Minister said that it is unfair that some people would benefit from public goods and at the same time avoid paying their part in creating these parts. This phrase should be repeated more often to instill into the public the idea that tax evasion is not some kind of sport that"s worthy of praise. On the contrary, tax evaders must be punished, because for every taxpayer that evades taxes, another has to pay more.

The position of the Minister is honorable but is not enough by itself. Until the legislation and control mechanisms become functional, Romania will continue to be the paradise of tax evasion.

Is it enough to have a personal fortune statement without it matching the revenues stated to the Tax Office?

One of the heads of the tax office told me that this type of investigations would be easily stopped in their tracks by the "aunt Tamara syndrome".

Meaning people that have goods that they can"t justify based on their taxable income, will justify their existence by claiming Those goods come from relatives found abroad, from uncovering small treasures in the backyard of their grandparents and other similar inventions. Romania has reproduced much of the Western legislation, but when it comes to preventing tax evasion, it is still living in the stone age.

Incidentally, in certain cases, tax evasion is even encouraged as an alternative to the low wages.

For instance, in the case of doctors and teachers. There are numerous TV debates on the grafts paid for getting contracts with the state, but this doesn"t seem to worry neither those who give bribes, nor those who take them.

The cases that become public are extremely rare.

Mr. Pogea has proposed that the press publish the names of companies who commit VAT fraud. Why not a list of people and companies who were sentenced for tax evasion, including the defrauded amount and the punishment?

I suppose there would not be too many publications that would rush to get this contract, given the low number of convicted tax dodgers.

The minister came to the conclusion that it"s better to introduce a fixed tax instead of improving the tax collection system.

In a way, it can be said that apart from the negative effects of this tax, it will be the only thing that the government will collect, because the minister will also introduce the total tax exemption for reinvested profit.

The new prime-minister talks pretty often about public interest, and president Băsescu said that he would never sign a document that does not serve public interest.

I wonder how does public interest get along with appointing the spokesperson of public notaries as prefect.

The former has made all the efforts to protecting into protecting the monopoly of public notaries, which goes against public interest.