Law no. 150/2018 has modified article 204 of the Tax Procedure Code by establishing new rules with regard to the delayed payment of certain tax obligations that influence the maintaining of an authorisation, approval or another similar administrative act,

Before the legal change, article 204 of the Tax Procedure Code had the following content: There will be no division into instalments of tax liabilities of which payments ensure the maintaining of an authorisation, an approval or a similar administrative act. For the purpose of this article, the liabilities referred to in article 184 paragraph (5) are not assimilated to these tax liabilities.

In other words, in a significant number of cases in which the maintaining of an authorisation or an approval was subject to the payment of tax liabilities, the taxpayer did not have the possibility of obtaining the payment’s division into instalments. This happened, for instance, in the matter of excise taxes or in the matter of gambling, establishing a disproportionate liability to be abode by the economic operators.

Fortunately, Law no. 150/2018 has corrected the tax legislator’s error of judgment and the equality between taxpayers has been restored by eliminating the limitation regarding the prohibition of using the division into instalments of tax payments procedure by certain taxpayers (in fact, a particular type of tax extortion for the full payment of tax liabilities under the threat of revoking the authorisation or the approval). Consequently, the current content of article 204 of the Tax Procedure Code is the following:

Article 204: The special regime of tax liabilities of which payment ensures the maintaining of the authorisation, approval or another similar administrative act.

(1) For the debtors who applied for division into instalments of payment and who have to pay the tax liabilities administrated by the national tax authority in a certain period in order to maintain the authorisation, the approval or another similar administrative act, the competent authority will not revoke/suspend the act on the grounds of non-payment of the tax liabilities in the period referred to in the specific legislation, and the guarantees lodged will not be executed until the settlement of the application for division into instalments of payment.

(2) In the situation in which the application for division into instalments of payment was rejected or withdrawn, the debtors referred to in paragraph (1) must pay the tax liabilities of which payment ensures the maintaining of the authorisation, the approval or the other similar administrative act, in a period of 15 days since the day of the communication of the decision of rejection or the decision that confirms the withdrawal of the application. In this case, a new application for division into instalments of payment may be submitted only after the payment of these tax liabilities.

(3) Within the duration of the division into instalments of payment, the competent authority will not revoke/suspend the authorisation, the approval or the similar administrative act on grounds of non-payment of the tax liabilities in the period referred to in the specific legislation, and the guarantees lodged will not be executed.