“The Miracle at the Romanian seaside”: Romania’s tax authority presents its results in ironical Facebook articles

Romania’s National Fiscal Administration Agency – ANAF has started a campaign on Facebook to showcase its achievements in fighting tax evasion and to improve its image. The agency has made a series of ironical Facebook posts targeted at “the politicians, specialists, journalists, and economists that claim that ANAF doesn’t perform in combating tax evasion”. “Some <<specialists>> say we don’t fight tax evasion and that the VAT revenues increase came exclusively from higher domestic consumption. The Bucharest Regional Direction collected 39% higher VAT revenues in August compared to August 2014, with a VAT rate for food of 9%, compared to 24% in August 2014. If consumption increased by 39% then these <<specialists>> are right,” one of ANAF Facebook posts says. Another post presents ten companies that operate clubs, bars of restaurants at the seaside, which strongly increased their declared revenues this summer, after ANAF’s controls. One club owner increased its declared revenues by 1,500% in May-July 2015 compared to the same period of last year, from about EUR 20,000 to EUR 324,000, according to ANAF. “We can only imagine what the exceptional manager of this establishment would say in an interview for the business magazines that present rankings and business success stories with characters that start with USD 100 from their families and reach millions of euros in revenues in a year: <<I honestly don’t know what to say. I am the same, and the club has nothing extra compared to the previous years. It must be the growth in consumption. Might be that the Romanians have been extremely thirsty this summer; as you know it was a drought. I also think that it’s possible that tourists drank more this year also because they were angry seeing how tax inspectors raided the club while they were partying>>,” reads the ironical post. The article goes on in the same tone saying that „while consumption at the seaside was increasing by 1,500%, the tax inspectors came to work and, in between the internal Solitaire championship matches, solved cases of small-time boutique owners such as identifying a chain of 70 companies controlled by two Turkish investors which have damaged the state budget by EUR 31 million since 2013”. ANAF’s post went viral on Facebook and collected more than 2,000 likes and almost 1,000 shares. ANAF’s facebook page has almost 13,000 fans. The agency also recently started to communicate on Twitter. Romania’s tax authority wants more independence Romanian PM: Tax authority increases collection by EUR 250 mln Romania’s Tax Agency starts controls at several big retailers Romania’s Tax Agency wants to keep track of troublesome contributors