A few days after the regulation of the new VAT system, in which there were numerous criticisms and reports from the business environment about how the pre-filled statements risk blocking the activity of the financial and accounting departments, the Ministry of Finance nuanced and completed the legal provisions so that the system is easier for companies to manage. Beyond changing and extending the procedural deadlines that initially made the system turn into an infernal bureaucracy, the Ministry also reduced the fines for not applying the system correctly and postponed their application until 2025, so that taxpayers indirectly benefit from a period of a few months to adapt and prepare internally to take over the pre-filled VAT statements.

The initial legal framework of the new e-TVA system is GEO 70/2024, published on June 21, which was corrected within a few days by GEO 87/2024, published on June 28 – practically, on the last possible day so that the regulation e-TVA should not be applied from July 1 in the original form in which it was thought by the authorities and harshly criticized by the business environment.

The Ministry of Finance partially modified the rules of the system, on the one hand to offer companies an accommodation period of at least a few months – by postponing fines until 2025, and on the other hand, correcting certain terms and procedures criticized by the business environment for their brevity and the pressure they therefore put on accounting departments.

So, although the system continues to be implemented from 1 August 2024 for operations carried out from 1 July 2024, it has been restructured in several key respects.

Let’s see how the e-TVA system will work in the end.

The pre-filled RO e-TVA return is a fiscal document that will contain data and information regarding the economic operations of taxpayers, as they are declared and registered in IT systems such as RO e-Invoice, RO e-Transport, RO e-Seal, RO e-SAF-T, RO e-Cash registers, the integrated customs IT system and other own systems of the Ministry of Finance and ANAF.

Settlement implementation and submission deadlines. The pre-filled statement will be sent by electronic means until the 5th of the month following the legal deadline for submitting the VAT statement.

Verification and compliance process. After receiving the pre-filled statement, taxpayers must verify the data and information provided, ensuring that they correctly reflect the taxable transactions performed and the fiscal status.

If ANAF identifies significant differences (over 20% in percentage and an absolute value of at least 5,000 lei) between the values ​​declared in the final VAT return submitted by taxpayers (form 300) and those pre-filled, the taxpayer will be warned through the “Notification of RO e-TVA compliance”.

In the original form of the regulation, the differences were considered significant if in absolute value they exceeded 1,000 lei, a value strongly criticized by companies and professionals in the accounting-fiscal sphere because it was too small, and its application could have considerably increased the number of requests for justification from ANAF for perfectly explainable differences, which in no way concern illegal VAT practices.

Taxpayer obligations and penalties. When receiving such notices, taxpayers are required to respond within 20 days of receiving them. Failure to fulfil the obligation may result in penalties ranging between 1,000 and 10,000 lei, depending on the size of the taxpayer.

In this chapter, the fines were reduced compared to what was foreseen in the original regulation, so that at this moment they are set at the following value thresholds: 5,000 lei – 10,000 lei for high taxpayers, 2,500 lei – 5,000 lei for medium taxpayers and 1,000 lei – 2,500 lei for other legal entities and individuals.

Also, failure to provide or partially provide the requested information will be indirectly sanctioned, in the sense that the act will represent a fiscal risk indicator, which means that it will be able to trigger a fiscal inspection or an anti-fraud control for companies that do not respond to requests for clarification initiated by ANAF.

However, we emphasize that the entire list of sanctions, i.e. both the fines and the aspects regarding the fiscal risk, have been postponed from application until January 1, 2025. In this way, companies practically benefit from a period of several months in which they can reorganize internally to also assimilate this new e-VAT system without the pressure of fines for non-compliance.

Exceptions and errors. The RO e-TVA compliance notification does not apply in cases of material errors or in situations where there is not enough correlated information in the tax body’s databases to fully complete the statement generated by ANAF. Other exceptions will be provided by order of the Minister of Finance.

Article published in Tax Magazine