According to a draft law (amending the OG 2/2001) which received the vote of the senators on 15 May, it is proposed that, in the event that the amounts from fines are not collected within two years, the National Tax Administration Agency (ANAF) will take over the enforcement of the amounts owed by offenders.
The proposal arises, according to the initiators, because the uncollected amounts from fines are very high, and ANAF, compared to local authorities, has “additional levers for identifying debtors and enforcing fines”.
Specifically, if the fines and related penalties have not been collected within two years from the date of registration, for reasons that cannot be attributed to the enforcement authority of the local authority, ANAF will be referred to take over the enforcement of the amounts owed by the offenders.
According to the proposed document, the request to ANAF can be made only after all forms of enforcement established by the Tax Procedure Code have been exhausted.
Then, no later than 30 days after taking over the enforcement, ANAF “will notify the taking over to the administrative-territorial unit/subdivision, which will deduct from its tax and accounting records the amounts not paid by the offender”.
It is important to point out that the amounts of fines and penalties collected by ANAF will go, by exception to the general rules, to the state budget.
According to the current provisions, “the sums from fines imposed on individuals in accordance with the legislation in force shall be paid in full to the local budgets of the administrative-territorial unit/subdivision in which the offender is domiciled”.
In the case of fines for which enforcement is taken over by ANAF, again as an exception to the rule, public administration authorities will no longer be responsible for their collection. The measure is scheduled to apply from 1 January 2024.