The Ministry of Finance published a press release explaining precisely that the deadline for submitting invoices in the RO e-Invoice system is five calendar days from the date of the invoice. Initially, the information was published in the form of a post on the institution’s Facebook page and later it was also taken up on the ministry’s official website in the same form, to probably give it more legal weight. Even so, however, the informal publication of this clarification in the form of a press release has little legal value and does not provide as much certainty to companies as a formal amendment to the legislation. In addition, the very method of calculation proposed by the ministry contradicts the traditional and generally applicable rules for calculating deadlines in Romanian legislation.

The information was published in the e-Invoice section on the website of the Ministry of Finance (here, in full format) and establishes that the deadline for reporting invoices in the RO e-Invoice system is calculated by calendar days, from the day following the day in which invoiced, and expires on the 5th day, regardless of whether this is a business day or a non-business day.

The institution also provides two examples for clarification:

 if an invoice is issued on August 5, the term starts to run from the following day, namely from August 6, and is considered completed on August 10, emphasizing that an invoice sent in the RO e-Invoice system on August 11 considered to be transmitted late.
 in the case of an invoice issued on July 31, applying the same reasoning, the last day on which taxpayers can send the invoice through the system would be August 5.

The problem is that the rules informally proposed by the ministry seem to contradict the rules of the Code of Civil Procedure, where a general term for calculating the terms is regulated, applicable whenever there is no special rule that provides for a specific method of calculation and that be applicable in certain specific situations.

Currently, the legal framework of e-Invoice, represented by GEO 120/2021, does not provide for any specific way of calculating the reporting terms in e-Invoice, so, according to the legislative technical rules in force, it should be the general way of calculation of the terms to be taken from the Code of Civil Procedure. This normative act establishes that when “when the term is counted in days, the day from which the term begins to run, nor the day when it is fulfilled” is not included in the calculation, and when the last day of a term falls on a non-working day, the term it is automatically extended until the next working day.

However, the Ministry decided to set a deadline in calendar days and use a different calculation procedure that does not exclude the last day from the calculation, suggesting that the authorities want the invoices to be uploaded to the system as soon as possible.

The clarification provided by the Ministry of Finance also highlights another important issue: the institution chose to publish its interpretation in a press release, which has little legal value and does not provide real assurances of the coherence and predictability of fiscal rules. Instead of opting for a clear and formal legislative amendment, which would have brought more legal certainty and could have prevented potential legal conflicts, the MoF made this clarification in an informal and non-binding framework.

Although we strongly recommend compliance with the interpretation of the MF in order to avoid conflicts with the tax authorities, we still believe that this interpretation can be challenged in court. As a result of this contradiction with the rules of the Civil Procedure Code, which offers a more flexible way of calculating the terms than the one offered by the Ministry of Finance through a simple press release, we believe that as long as the e-Invoice legislation does not change in the meaning of including a way of calculating the term in a normative act, the fines applied for one-day delays can be challenged by companies in fiscal litigation, where favourable solutions can be obtained from the judges.

Article published in TaxNews.ro