New VAT payment system starting with January 2013

According to Government Decision 15/2012 for modifying the Law 571/2003 regarding the Fiscal Code for 2013, the taxpayers with tax residence in Romania and whose revenue during October 1st 2011 – September 30th 2012, does not exceed 2.250.000 RON will be applying the VAT charge on cashed-in system starting January 1st 2013.

In order to comply with these provisions, the taxpayer who is pass to the new system is responsible for submitting, before October 25th, a written notification to prove that revenue during October 1st 2011 – September 30th 2012 (inclusive) did not exceed the 2.250.000 RON limit.

• VAT on cash system does not apply to taxpayers that are part of a single fiscal group.
• VAT on cash system applies only to transactions where goods or services are in Romania.

Transations which are not affected by the new system

Law no. 76/2012 for the implementation of law no. 134/2012 concerning the Civil Procedure Code is the law that brings modifications for commercial companies.
This law will enter into force on 01.09.2012.

Art.79 of law no. 76/2012 stipulates: “In a term of 2 years after the present law enters into force, companies registered in the Commercial Register with the words “commercial company” in their name are required to do the necessary steps in order to replace them with the term “company”. Until completing these steps, the company can function with the name entered in the Commercial Register when the present law entered into force. The registration in the Commercial Register of this mention about the modification of the constitutive act concerning the change of the name of the company is exempt of registration tax”.

The midsummer of 2012 marked a change in the management of Ascent Group. Thus, with the 1st of July, the new financial manager of Ascent Group is Otilia Gal.

Otilia is an alumni of the Faculty of Economics from the University of Timisoara. Over the years she enriched her knowledge by attending numerous courses and specializations in finance and accounting.

Professionally, Otilia has 10 years of experience in finance, both within multinational companies and local companies.

During the last four years Otilia has held the position of financial advisor in the Arad office of Ascent Group Arad, and since the 1st of July 2012 she became the financial manager of Ascent Group.

• First step is finding that aberrance.

• First step is finding that aberrance.

Contribution rates of the employers and the employees for 2012 are currently established by the two normative acts: Law No: 294/2011 Law on social state insurance budget in 2012, published in the Official Monitor no. 913 and the Law No: 293/2011- Law on state budget in 2012, published in the Official Monitor no. 914 of 22 December 2011.

Contribution to the social insurances

For 2012, the contribution rates of the social insurances are:

According to art. 134 of the Labour Code, actualised in 2011 with the Law 40/2011, in Romania the legal non-working days are:

• 1-2 January, New Year
• 1st and 2nd day of Easter
• 1st of May, international worker`s day
• 1st and 2nd day of Whitsuntide, 3-4th of June
• Assumption Day, 15th of August
• 1st of December, National Day of Romania
• 1st and 2nd day of Christms, 25-26 December

The people who belong to different religions than the Orthodox one have the right to take two days off for every one of the three annual religious holidays, declared so by the legal religious cults.

More additional proposals for days-off have been made: 24th of January, 10th of May or 30th of November, but these haven`t been aproved yet, still having the project status. Therefore, these days are not presently acknowledged as legal holidays.

According to the H.G. no. 1225/2011, starting with 01.01.2012 the minimum ensured gross wage per country is established to 700 lei/month compared to 670 lei/month as it used to be by the end of 2011.

The amount of 700lei/month is being established for a full time schedule of 169,33 hours average per month in 2012 which represents 4.13 lei/hour.

An individual contract termination with a salary below the one established as the minimal gross wage per country will be considered as minor offence and will be sanctioned according to the law with a fee from 1.000 lei to 2.000 lei.

Therefore, according to the new purview, the minimum gross wage per country is 700 lei for an uqualified worker.

H.G.1225/2011 for establishing the minimum gross wage per country was published in Monitorul Oficial of 14 December 2011.

Every beginning of the year comes with a series of questions regarding the reporting of the financial situation of the last year. In the following article, we will try to give an answer to some of the frequently asked questions on this matter, with reference to the 2011 financial year.

When do we submit Declaration 101 in 2012?

According to Ordonance nr. 2/25^th of January 2012 regarding modification and completion of OG 92/2003 regarding Fiscal Procedure Code, annual declaration of income tax (tax on profit) for 2011 will be submitted, with the proper authorities, until March 25th, except non-profit organizations and companies with their majority of income based on cereal culture and technical plants, tree and vine farming, which submit their form up to 25^th of february 2012.

During the same year, the Romanian Government publishes a new order by introducing a new procedure for registration in VAT […]

Government approved two ordinances which amend the Tax Code and the Tax Procedure Code, designed to help companies during the current crisis.

The main changes are:

Early summer marked a change in the Ascent Group team. Thus, from the 1st of May, the new HR manager of Ascent Group in Romania is Ramona Bosînceanu.
Ramona is an alumnus of the Economics Faculty of the Aurel Vlaicu University in Arad, and of a Master program in Human Resources Management. Over the years, Ramona enriched her knowledge by attending numerous courses and specializations in the field of human resources.
Ramona has 9 years of experiences in the field of human resources, of which 3 years as a human resources specialist at Ascent Group. During this period she was involved in many projects of personal recruitment and executive search, personnel administration and payroll, personal assessment, restructuring of enterprises, collective negotiations and training.

In the Official Gazette, Part I, no. 0225 of 31 March 2011, Law 40/2011, for amending and supplementing Law no. 53/2003 – Labor Code, was published.

Amendments to the Labor Code are as follows:

1. Article 1 – (1) ‘This code regulates the employment relationship”, as compared to “implements all individual and collective labor relations.”

2. 16 – (2) Brings the obvious completion “Before entering the service, the individual employment contract shall be entered in the register of employee records, which is transmitted to the Territorial Labor Inspectorate” electronically.
If before the employer had to register the contract with the Labor Inspectorate within 20 days and then to hand the employee a copy of it, article 16 – (3) comes with completion “The employer is obliged, before commencement of work, to hand the employee a copy of the employment contract.”

Young entrepreneur, a new form of SRL

In the Official Gazzete of Romania nr. 103/09.02.2011 was published the Government Emergency Ordinance no. 6/02.02.2011 to stimulate the establishment and development of micro enterprises by young entrepreneurs.

Intrested persons, who wish to benefit from the Program to stimulate creation and development of micro enterprises by young entrepreneurs, may require registration with the Trade Registry within whose territorial jurisdiction the head office.

Program beneficiaries covered by this emergency ordinance, called young trader, is a major individual who meets the following conditions:

Starting July 1^st 2010, new tax and fiscal regulations are applied in Romania, due to the Emergency Ordinance 58 from June 26^th 2010, that will affect all sectors of the national economy.

We briefly present the changes brought by this ordinance:

Profit Tax

Article 32 of the Fiscal Code is amended and has the following content:

“Art.32 Any loss realized by permanent headquarters situated in other states other than Member States of the European Union / European Association of Free Trade or which are located in a state with which Romania has concluded a double taxation convention is deductible only from the income earned by that permanent headquarters.

As by the application rules of the Romanian Tax Code, the companies founded in 2010 pay income tax but do not pay the minimum tax.

This provision is included in art.11^6 of the Implementing Rules of the Tax Code for Article 18:

“11^6. Taxpayers established during the year are not entering under the provisions of Art. 18 para. (2) for the year wehen they are registered at the Trade Registry, but they are required to determine the income tax as by the provisions of Title II “Tax profits” of the Tax Code.”

In the current European context, the evolution of unemployment rate is particularly important for major investments as well as for small and medium sized enterprises. Forecasts are bleak as possible : “I think unemployment rate did not reach yet its highest rate, but this will happen in 2010, in the first or second quarter. I do not think we will reach a rate of 10% but this is my opinion, “said the economist of the World Bank, Catalin Pauna.

Here we are in the second quarter of 2010 and taking into consideration the overview of the first quarter of this year we can say that the forecasts are not far from being fulfilled. If the unemployment rate in Romania for the last quarter of 2009 was 7.5%, in the first quarter of 2010 it reached 8.3% in comparison to 5.6% in the same period of last year.

This applies not only to Romania, the same upward trend being valid for Bulgaria too, another country in the region.

Romanian Senate approved in March 2010 the Law stipulating that corporate taxpayers will have the possibility to pay VAT resulting from the issuing of the invoice to customers within 30 days from receipt of the amounts and not until the 25th of the month following the month in which the invoice was issued.

This amendment is contrary to the European Directive 112/2006, which states as a general rule that the payment liability appears at the time of the delivery of goods, at the date of services provisioning and on the date of receipt of advance payments before delivery or performance.

However, notwithstanding the general rule regarding the generator event and VAT payment, at art. 66 from the European Directive 112, there is stated that EU Member States may stipulate that VAT becomes chargeable for certain transactions or certain categories of taxable persons, the latest at the payment date.

The Romanian Government decided to offer starting with 1st of February 2010, another period of three months of technical unemployment during which the social charges for the employees will not be paid, but the employers have to certify the difficult period of their company by giving a statutory declarations. These companies will be periodically checked by ANAF.

The new period of technical unemployment will be applied from February 2010 but not later than December 31, 2010. During the suspension of the individual employment contract the employees and the employers (of those employees) are exempt from paying social security contributions for no more than 90 days.

Personnel layoffs, in both private and public system, are one of the most common topics in the mass-media our days.

Regarding this issue, for most of us 2009 meant fear. It seems that even the new state regulations have formed premises to personnel reduction.

But, we come to ask now if dismissal is really the only alternative to reducing the personnel cost?
The answer is far to be a simple yes or no. Many factors are involved in this decision such as:

• the business of the company;
• suppliers and customers;
• number of competitors in the market;
• substitution rate of products and services
• the future strategy of the company

Taking into account all these factors, when the management concludes that a company needs to reduce costs, a careful analyze regarding the following issues is request:

Until few years ago, Romania was still full of tourists spending their holidays in Mamaia, Eforie, 1 Mai, and was welcoming them, in the specifically hospitality spirit with inflated prices, lowest quality service and forced smiles. We were enjoying it or, better, we had to enjoy it because we had no choice.

Today, the situation is different. Our Bulgarian neighbors saw that we have a problem and found a very suitable solution to our needs: they learn Romanian language or employed Romanian-speaking Bulgarians, they nicely smiled to foreign investors and now, the majority of Romanian tourists but not only, already changed the itinerary of their holiday to Bulgaria. Who has not heard of Golden Sands, Albena and Balchik? 1-0 for Bulgaria.

We are în the crisis: crisis of trained people, resource people, talented people.

And we are also in the crisis of people able to identify, develop and keep the resource people in the companies.

Ascent Group is your partner in the process of personal and professional development of your employees, because the continuous personnel development is a need felt by any company especially during the curent economical context.

Ascent Group brings a modern vision into the learning process, by emphasizing the benefits of “learning by doing” through exercises, role-plays and behavioral modeling. Our training programs have an interactive approach, are personalized and addressed to each client’s unique demands, to their visions and organizational objectives.

In 2010, in addition to the minimum tax that has got no economical logic, the tax system for micro-enterprises in Romania was adjusted as well, from an income tax based on applying a rate of 3% on revenue, to the implementation of an income tax with a rate of 16%, even further burdening these enterprises that have been already affected by the global economic crisis.

I believe that eliminating the income taxation of micro-enterprises and keeping the minimum tax which, I repeat, has no economical logic, will substantially contribute to the suspension or closure of many companies and certainly the growth of tax evasion in 2010.

At the end of last year, the European Commission approved a program proposed by Romania which is valid until December 31, 2010 and is expected to offer support to the companies that have financial problems due to the worst conditions of the economic crisis.

The financial support may be granted by the Romanian authorities only to companies that were not în difficulty on July 1, 2008. The companies will receive grants, concessional loans, interest subsidies, guarantees or phasing the claims hold by the state without charging interest.

Training was one of the most affected sectors uring the crisis. We all know that training market dramatically decreased last year, due to the “education cost freeze” process in most of the companies.

However, even during the crisis period, some of the topics were highly requested by companies, especially because they respond tu curent needs.

One of the most popular training modules during the crisis, was certainly the one related to entrepreneurship and the ways to use the basics of entrepreneurship in the work activities, dedicated to managers and employees who want to develop their entrepreneurial spirit in their jobs. The difference that this new module is bringing on the Romanian market is encouraging the employees of the companies to build and grow a business and not just to manage it.

Under current legislation, employers in Romania are required to register the individual employment contracts at Labor Inspectorates within 20 calendar days from their closing and to transmit them to the General Registry of Evidence of Employees within 5 days.

Due to some new regulations, as a measure against tax evasion, the Labor Ministry published the GD. 37/2010 on January 20th, 2010 which states that employers must register in the General Registry of Evidence of Employees the employment contracts and the identification data of employees – name, surname, personal identification number, date of employment, position, type of contract – not later than the previous day of the beginning of work by the employee. The employment contract must be submitted online or presented at the Labor Inspectorate on the same date, the term of 5 days given to employers to communicate this information at the Labor Inspectorates being eliminated.