Since there are private companies in Romania, they have tried to deduct as much value from the protocol as possible. Fiscally, the protocol is the amounts of money, as such or the goods, services, that a company makes outside the expenses recognized as deductible. This means that, for years, the Tax Office has included protocol expenses in a percentage of 2% of the profit, but not more than 20% of the profit tax.
This means that if you make a profit, then you also have a deductible protocol. If not, then the protocol is completely non-deductible. Since last year, however, the tax authorities have succumbed to European pressure and allowed the granting of goods of up to 100 lei, as deductible protocol gifts. At the same time, meals with business partners have become deductible – less VAT. And you can make gifts to promote the company in the form of services provided – there is no ceiling. Beyond all these aspects, many companies spend on protocol expenses and expenses that are made for the company’s employees. Water, juices, coffee, teas. All this was once considered a protocol. But now, in order to fulfill the same quality, they must be consumed only by the company’s clients and not by employees. If they are taken for employees, they become an employee advantage and pay taxes are collected. It’s like giving a bonus to the employee, but you don’t give him money, but coffee, tea, sugar, water.
Of course, of the tens of thousands of companies that offer such facilities to their employees, few fall into the category of “salary advantage” and most pass the protocol. It depends only on the Tax Office that, during the controls performed at the taxpayers, to identify these expenses and to impose them, with the necessary penalties. Even so, the taxpayer has at hand a trivial and still unused procedure on a large scale: he can make an internal note signed by the company’s administrator, attached to the respective invoices, showing that all those expenses were made for customers and partners who come to the company’s headquarters. And only through a few written lines, the company is no longer obliged to collect taxes, the employee advantage becoming some common protocol expenses.