Taking into account the need to combat tax evasion, to increase the collection of revenues, to ensure better monitoring of the activity of economic operators performing retail deliveries of goods and services, directly to the population, since January 2014, the Government issued draft amendment to O.U.G. no. 28/1999, regarding the obligation of the economic operators to use electronic cash register.

The project aimed among other things, the mandatory use of the cash registers with electronic journal by the economic operators and removing the cash register with journal roller.

At the end of 2014, the Government approved the Emergency Ordinance no. 91/23.12.2014 amending and completing the O.U.G. nr. 28/1999, regarding the obligation of the economic operators to use electronic cash registers.

The new provisions require that the economic operators who receive in full or partial, cash or using credit cards/debit cards or cash substitutes retail value of the delivered goods and the services carried out directly by the population are forced to use electronic cash registers.

The economic operators obliged by law to use the electronic cash registers, for issuing tax receipts, must gradually replace (transition period of about a year and a half) the electronic cash registers equipped with journal paper rolls, with the ones equipped with the electronic journal and connect them to the system of supervision and monitoring, in order to transmit data to A.N.A.F.

The big taxpayers will use the new devices starting with 1 April 2016, while from 1 July 2016 the same obligation will be for the medium taxpayers. In what concerns the small taxpayers, they will be forced to use the devices with electronic journal starting with 1 November 2016. From 1 January 2016 it will be forbidden the trade of electronic cash registers with journal roller.

This measure aims to ensure conditions for fair competition between taxpayers, to improve the control activities and to ensure the necessary leverage to reduce tax evasion in the retail and services delivered directly to the population. Such a measure was taken by the majority of European countries, including Croatia, Hungary, Greece, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Romania is among the few European countries that still use the old generation devices, with paper rolls.

The advantages that the new system of cash registers equipped with electronic journal bring to retailers are: the elimination of the acquisition costs of the paper rolls (average economy / year/ cash register ≈ EUR 150), the elimination of the costs with the storage areas for a period of two years, a more effective management and control due to the possibility of informatics processing of data submitted on electronic support.

The provisions of the normative act creates the legal framework for drawing up a National register of evidence of the electronic cash registers, and the subsequent implementation of the procedure of surveillance and monitoring of the functioning of the electronic cash registers, as a measure to combat tax evasion.

The procedure for connecting the electronic cash registers to a national informatics system of surveillance and monitoring of fiscal data will be established by A.N.A.F., in 6 months after the expiration of the transitional periods for all economic operators that fall under the normative act (respectively, after the maximum 390 days, term provided by law for small taxpayers).

The recent provisions have modified the content of the tax receipt. In its content will be introduced as mandatory elements, for the devices with electronic journal:

- the unit of measure,
- the registration code for VAT purposes of the beneficiary, on its request (it is considered to correlate with the provisions for deduction of VAT that can be justified by the tax receipts that meet the conditions of a simplified invoice).

The normative act mentions a number of technical and functional conditions that must be fulfilled by the electronic cash registers. The Ministry of Public Finance will manage and publish on the website a record of the authorized distributors and approved electronic cash registers, and a list of the authorized entities for commercialization and/or service of these devices.

The normative act completes the current legislation with new facts which constitute contravention or through their gravity constitute a felony. Among these are:

• the failure to respect by the users of the electronic cash registers of the terms provided by law, to use the electronic cash registers, (fine of 8.000 to  10.000 Lei, and  suspension of the business activity in the working point, from 1 month to 3 months, depending on the gravity of the facts);
• the refusal to reintroduce the data from journal roller regarding the transactions from the last daily close until the moment of the erase of the operative memory for the electronic cash registers without electronic journal, (fine of 8.000 Lei to 10.000 Lei);
• the refusal of the user to allow the service technician on the unit for carrying out the verifications at request and in the presence of the control authorities over the electronic cash registers (fine of 2.000 Lei to 4.000 Lei).

Simona Pau, Senior Tax Consultant, PKF Finconta, office@pkffinconta.ro.

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