WASHINGTON: Inspectors of the Romanian tax authority ANAF have found unreported revenues of EUR 26.5 million (RON 119.5 million) during checks performed between 2016 and April 2017 on wealthy individuals and those with a high fiscal risk, Agerpres reported. ANAF also found that the revenues reported by high fiscal risk individuals stood at only EUR 867,000 (RON 3.9 million). The checks are part of an ANAF program started in 2015 and looking at wealthy individuals with a high fiscal risk. High fiscal risk individuals are “rich owners of poor companies,” people that own valuable properties but have no known economic activities, people with volatile revenues, and high-risk individuals who don’t fall into the previous three categories.
ANAF is still performing some 245 checks, which are scheduled to end this year. “We have noticed with concern the reporting of revenues of not even RON 4 million (some EUR 890,000), which makes us wonder if money as revenue tax isn’t missing. When we performed the checks we notified the prosecutors in 12 cases, for total damages of EUR 2.8 million (RON 12.7 million). In eight of the cases we were notified by the National Office for Preventing Money Laundering,” said Eugen Șerban, the director of the General Department for Individuals’ Revenues Control with ANAF.
Some EUR 9.9 million (RON 44.7 million) out of the total undeclared revenues were discovered in the case of individuals with high revenues, and some EUR 16.6 million (RON 75 million) at individuals with a high fiscal risk. As such, ANAF calculated additional payment obligations of almost EUR 6 million (RON 27 million). It collected some EUR 956,000 (RON 4.3 million) out of these. Legal procedures are underway to recover the remaining sum. The differences between reported and real revenues come mainly from company credits and from buying property. In some cases, the individuals checked argued that they found the money inside their house or in their back yard, the ANAF representative explained. “The largest part of these funds allocations were paid in cash. The tax payers explained the sources of these allocations as loans from other individuals. But when we requested the documents, in most of the cases, they were missing the authentication elements. Another explanation for the cash sums accumulated in the period prior to the checks and spent throughout the check, without any evidence of their source, was that the money was found in the backyard on the occasion of some diggings,” Șerban explained.
