Photo caption: Prime Minister Mihai Tudose publicly supports split VAT but the company in which he has declared interests does not support Mihai Tudose
In the democracy, the power of example is a way often used by state officials to demonstrate the fairness of the decisions assumed.
We do not see too often that happening in Romania, nor does it happen in the specific case of the changes approved in the VAT regime: 11 Government members own or are shareholders (according to their declarations of interest posted on the official website of the Government) in private companies but none of them adopted the optional split VAT system.
The company in which Prime Minister Mihai Tudose himself is a shareholder has avoided enrolling in the split VAT system on October 1st, despite the tax advantages offered by its shareholder, Prime Minister Tudose.
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Of course, you can no longer take care of a business when you have decided to dedicate yourself to the general good, so it is common sense to suppose that those who entered the Government handed over the „keys” to their own business to someone else.
But if this measure is good, as the Government and PSD officially tell us, then it should be natural to „spend” five minutes to let the person in charge of your former business to not miss the opportunity.
In the case of the split VAT, neither Prime Minister Mihai Tudose nor Deputy Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu nor any of the other nine cabinet colleagues did that.
For this verification, the application created by ANAF for checking the business partners enrolled in the optional program has been used, so that the VAT for the acquisitions would be paid, if necessary, to the special account.
Prime Minister Mihai Tudose is a shareholder of the company 1001 Net Romania SRL, as the statement of interests submitted at the Chamber of Deputies indicates.
According to the ANAF application, the company was not registered on October 8 in the Register of legal entities applying the split VAT:
The situation repeats in the case of Deputy Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu, who is a shareholder in three companies.
Verifications made with the ANAF application have the same result for all three companies: they do not use the split VAT payment:
Among the members of Tudose government, nine other ministers have mentioned in their statements of interests shares held in various companies:
- Andreea Pastarnac, Minister for Romanians Everywhere
- Florian Bodog, Health Minister
- Gheorghe Simon, Minister of Economy
- Gratiela Gavrilescu, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Environment
- Lucian Romascanu, Minister of Culture
- Teodor Melescanu, Foreign Minister
- Petre Daea, Minister of Agriculture
- Viorel Ilie, Minister for Relations with the Parliament
- Victor Negrescu, Deputy Minister for European Affairs (with the mention made by the minister that the company of which he is a shareholder – Esprit Consulting SRL – is „in the procedure of closing down the company”)
None of the companies mentioned in the statements of interests submitted by the ministers listed above can be found in the ANAF’s special Register on split VAT.
Tudose Government approved in August, despite the unanimous objections of the business environment, the decision on split VAT payments. The measure is optional as of October 1st and mandatory as of January 1, 2018
Several days after the approval of the split VAT, Finance Minister Ionut Misa told Ziarul Financiar that „thousands of companies have announced that they apply VAT as of October 1st.”
The same publication recently finds that, despite the optimistic estimate of the Finance Minister, only 175 companies registered for the optional system.
