The European Commission asks Romania to urgently align the system of taxes collected on the car registration to the European one. The request is announced on Thursday as part of May infringement “package”.
According to the Commission’s release:
„The European Commission has decided to send a letter conveying the formal notification to Romania about the failure to fully and immediately reimburse registration taxes collected on second-hand vehicles purchased from other EU member states. This way the European law is violated because Romanian decisions on returning the tax do not meet the principles of sincere cooperation, equivalence and effectiveness. If within the next two months Romania does not act, the Commission may send a reasoned opinion to the Government.”
The reasoned opinion is the next step in the infringement procedure.
According to some statements made in 2017 by the current Deputy Prime Minister Viorel Stefan, at that moment, the Ministry of Finance had evidence of executory titles issued by the courts (trials won with final decisions) for a total amount of RON 500 million.
In total, the state would have to refund RON 6 billion, collected from various car taxes.
Car taxes paid by Romanians in the past are returned to them, as of January 2018, through a new administrative procedure.
According to the rules established last year, refund requests must be submitted to the tax authorities in charge and the submission deadline is August 31, 2018.
Car owners would receive the money paid for the special tax, pollution tax, pollutant emission tax and environmental stamp.
The amounts are refunded only based on decisions issued by the central tax body in charge, as follows:
- for the special tax on cars and other motor vehicles, the pollution tax for motor vehicles, the tax on pollutant emissions from motor vehicles, between January 1 and December 31, 2018
- for the environmental stamp for motor vehicles, between September 1, 2018, and March 31, 2019
