For all companies that have a general obligation to make SAF-T reports, the year 2024 also brings an additional obligation, which will have to be solved for the first time by most of them: the transmission of asset reports through the standard fiscal control file (Standard Audit File for Tax). The deadline for this declaration – in most cases, the first of its kind since the introduction of SAF-T in Romania – is until the end of May, but companies must already prepare internally to be able to generate asset reports because they have a complexity raised and involve both the extraction of data from existing accounting systems and the preparation of complementary manual files that provide all the information at the level of detail requested by the authorities.

Beyond the monthly or quarterly transmission of financial-accounting and tax data, the SAF-T file also has a separate component that obliges companies to provide the authorities with accurate and complete reports on the assets held annually, which involves both a breakdown of the values ​​and categories of fixed assets held, as well as an x-ray of the movements of these assets, whether they are acquisitions, depreciations, upgrades, transfers or other such operations.

Fixed assets are reported annually, and the reporting deadline is until the date of submitting the financial statements. The obligation will return in 2024 to all large and medium-sized companies that have already entered the SAF-T reporting system and that have submitted the mandatory monthly or quarterly files for the entire previous financial year.

For taxpayers whose fiscal year overlaps with the calendar year, the deadline for submitting the SAF-T fixed assets report is May 29, 2024 (or as soon as they have submitted the annual financial statements for the 2023 financial year). For taxpayers who have a fiscal year different from the calendar one, the reporting of fixed assets is submitted no later than 150 days after the end of the modified financial year.

Broadly speaking, asset reporting through the standard tax audit file must include two main subsections: one dedicated to assets, which reflects the company’s fixed asset register, and another for asset transactions, which highlights their movements. The information that will need to be reported to the authorities includes the name of the assets, the input value, depreciation, depreciation period, classification code, additions, upgrades or transfers.

For most companies, extracting and adjusting this information from existing accounting systems represent significant challenges, requiring in most cases manual operations or the preparation of separate files from which certain data that do not traditionally exist in accounting systems can be automatically retrieved. This last step can increase the risk of errors and incorrect reporting, which forces taxpayers to prepare ahead of time to be able to submit appropriate reports on time and in accordance with SAF-T requirements.

The penalties for not submitting SAF-T reports on time are, according to the Fiscal Procedure Code, between 1,000 and 5,000 lei, and the incorrect or incomplete submission of the standard fiscal control file with amounts between 500 and 1,500 lei is also fined.

It is also worth knowing that SAF-T also involves a declaration of stocks, but this type of reporting is only submitted at the request of ANAF, within 30 days at the most from when they were requested. And in the case of this declaration, companies must ensure that they have all the information required by the tax administration authorities at their disposal at all times. The stock report is also very detailed and must provide accurate data about the stocks themselves (the warehouse where the goods are kept, the code and type of the products, their owner, price, quantity and value), but also about stock movements (cannot it only reports inputs/outputs, but all types of outputs must be detailed according to standardized codes: consumption, inventory plus/minus, goods given free of charge, degraded goods, expired goods etc.).

Article published in TaxNews.ro