Emergency Ordinance no. 6/2015 (hereinafter “EO”) was approved with certain amendments and clarifications concerning independent activity, artificial transactions, VAT and excise duties.
General provisions
Independent activity
The criteria provided previously by the Fiscal Code in order to reconsider an independent activity into a dependent one have been repealed. In addition, the EO repeals the provision according to which, if an activity is reconsidered as dependent, the income tax and mandatory social charges will be recalculated and wired, being due jointly from both the payer and the income beneficiary.
According to the provisions of the EO, when determining the conditions to be met in order for an activity to be assessed as independent, a set of seven criteria was introduced, as well as an additional condition that at least four of such criteria would have to be met.
Artificial transactions
The provisions of article 11 regarding artificial transactions were removed and new provisions were introduced as regards the right of the tax authority to adjust the tax effects of a transaction / activity not taken into consideration / reclassified as well as the obligation of the tax authority to justify its decision.
In addition, it clarifies the fact that the tax authority can also adjust the treatment from the social security perspective not
only from the tax perspective.
The procedure for the application of the above will be established by order of the President of the National Agency of Fiscal Administration.
Value added tax
Taxable / non-taxable persons
Government bodies governed by the public law are not considered taxable persons for the activities performed as public authorities (with certain exceptions).
Also, it is provided that operations carried out by agricultural intervention agencies on agricultural products and based on regulations regarding common organization of the market of those products shall be treated as activities carried out by taxable persons.
9% reduced rate
The restaurant and catering services for which the reduced rate of 9% is applied also include the beer having CN code 22 03 00 10 (“beer made from malt, in containers holding more than 10 L”).
Excise duties
Reduced excise duties for beer
The reduced specific excise duties regime is applied to beer produced by small independent breweries whose production in the previous year did not exceed 200,000 hl/year and the authorized warehouse keeper declares that in the current year it will produce a quantity smaller than 200,000 hl / year
In this respect, the definition of “a small independent brewery” is introduced, as well as special provisions regarding the consequences of exceeding the production of 200,000 hl / year by the authorized warehouse keeper.
