This is making Romania the third best country in Central and Eastern Europe when it comes to time to comply, after Estonia and Lithuania, but ahead of Slovakia (207 hours), Slovenia (260 hours), Hungary (277 hours), Poland (286 hours), Czech Republic (413 hours) and Bulgaria (454 hours).
“Yet Romania’s position is hindered by the underdevelopment of the online tax payment possibilities, which is still making Romania the country in Central and Eastern Europe with the highest number of tax payments per year – 39. Even if this indicator improved in recent years, without a further reduction in the number of payments there won’t be substantial progress in the Paying Taxes ranking”, stated Mihaela Mitroi, Tax and Legal Services Leader, PwC Romania.
According to a recent PwC Romania survey, the financial managers of Romanian companies would like ANAF to focus more on improving electronic filing and online tax payments, by investing in its IT infrastructure.
“ANAF is at a crucial moment when it needs to focus on reforming itself in order to increase tax collection and narrow tax evasion and to make it easier for tax payers to comply with the tax legislation”, added Mihaela Mitroi.
Romania ranks 134th worldwide in the Paying Taxes 2014, a report by the World Bank and PwC asses the ease of tax compliance across 189 economies worldwide by looking at three main indicators: the total tax rate, meaning the amount of all taxes levied on a company as percentage of its profits, the time to comply, the number of hours needed for a medium-sized company to comply with the tax regulations imposed in its country, and the number of payments the company needs to undertake yearly in order to comply with the fiscal legislation. Last year, Romania was on the 136th position worldwide.
Paying Taxes 2014 measures all mandatory taxes and contributions that a medium-sized firm must pay in a given year. Taxes and contributions measured include the profit or corporate income tax, social contributions and labour taxes paid by the employer, property taxes, property transfer taxes, waste collection taxes, vehicle and road taxes, and other small taxes or fees.
For more information about the Paying Taxes study, visit: www.pwc.com/payingtaxes.
The Paying Taxes annual report builds on the World Bank Group’s Doing Business reports’ chapter on Paying Taxes. For more information on the DoingBusiness report series, visit:www.doingbusiness.org
