PwC: In Romania, companies pay taxes 113 times per year

Romania occupied the 27th place in the European Union and the 146th place in the world in a top analyzing the efficiency with which companies can pay their taxes. Plus, Romania occupies the 181 position in a world list of 181 countries regarding the number of tax payments.

The most popular reforms regarding taxes were those aiming at reducing profit taxes in the economy of 21 countries, the Paying Taxes 2009 report shows, presented by PricewaterhouseCoopers based on the Doing Business 2009 study set up by the World Bank.

The main ideas presented by PwC fiscal consultancy chief Peter de Ruiter:

• PwC seeks to pressure countries to reduces taxes. A country needs to stimulate the economic activity by enabling user friendly ways for tax payments

• three main indicators: number of taxes (Romania is not very well placed), the time frame for paying taxes (Romania is relatively well positioned), percent of tax from revenue – in Romania, it is 16%, relatively low but there are other taxes like salaries, social insurances that downgrade it even lower and the overall situation is not so bright

• in Romania, the number of payments grew in 2007-2008
• total taxes of profits 48% as compared to last year’s percent of 46.9%
• Romania is placed on 146 as compared to 134 last year due to the big number of payments, per year

• the 2008 economic measures will improve Romania’s situation

as compared to other European countries, Romania is last

The main conclusions of the study are that the fiscal system needs to have a clear cut goal: to obtain revenues that would then finance the public spending and Romania did not make a good job outlining its goals.

Moreover, the system needs to be stable and consistent, and not contain the international activity, to be flexible enough. Plus, Romanian experts need to consult economic actors also and be accessible and applied consequently.

World Bank Senior Operations Officer Arabela Abrahamian declared that Romania had an important pace of growth in the last years. However, the effects of the international market will be noticeable in Romania as well. Thus, government officials need to concentrate on structural reforms.