Accounting, business and taxes news November 2015
Business news
Political crisis generated by the Colectiv tragedy
The main event of the last month was, unfortunately, the tragic event of the fire that burned the Colectiv dance club. Till now, 50 people have died and hundreds are injured.
As a reaction to the severe lack of fire protection controls and authorizations, and to the grave problems of the bureaucratic system of Romania, since then thousands of people demonstrated each day against the corruption and the whole political system.
The Prime Minister, the Government and the Mayor of sector 4 of Bucharest resigned (the last one was arrested).
Till the November 2016 elections Romania will have a new Prime Minister and Government, a technocrat one.
The President designated as new Prime Minister Mr Dacian Ciolos, the ex – EU Commissary for Agriculture in the Baroso
Tax news
Emergency changes of the Fiscal Code
The new Fiscal Code (Law 227/2015), to enter in force from 01.01.2016, has already suffered changes through an emergency ordinance approved by the Government on 28.10.2015.
The most important modification is the decrease of dividend tax from 16% to 5%. The reduced rate will apply to the dividends which will be distributed beginning with 2016, instead of 2017, as set last month. Therefore, the measure will bring an advantage to those who have not yet distributed dividends in previous years and who kept profits, from various reasons, such as reinvesting them. The dividend tax applies to:
the distributions of dividends between Romanian legal entities
the dividend income, including capital gain as a result of holding participation titles in collective investment undertakings
the dividend income obtained by non-residents in Romania.
Another important modification of the new Fiscal Code regards the microenterprises. Starting from 2016, in order to be considered microenterprises, the new maximum limit of the revenues for the companies will be 100.000 EUR, instead of 65.000 EUR.
Starting from the next year, the microenterprises income tax rate will change as well. The new rates are established based on the number of employees:
• 1% for the microenterprises which have over 2 employees
• 2% for the microenterprises which have 1 employee
• 3% for the microenterprises which don’t have employees
• 1% for 24 months, only for the new set-up companies, which
have at least 1 employee.
In order to prevent potential abuses of the companies that could
possibly use them as law tax vehicles for high salaries payments, the
ordinance takes into consideration also the duration of the
employment contracts.
Macroeconomic indicators
RON / EUR ex-rate evolution
31.12.2011: 4.3197
30.12.2012: 4.4287
31.01.2013: 4.4847
31.12.2014: 4.4821
31.01.2015: 4.4424
28.02.2015: 4.4381
31.03.2015: 4.4061
30.04.2015: 4.4031
31.05.2015: 4.4395
30.06.2015: 4.4931
31.07.2015: 4.4075
31.08.2015: 4.4302
30.09.2015: 4.4248
31.10.2015: 4.4322
Inflation rate evolution
2011: 5.79 %
2012: 3.33 %
2013: 3.98 %
2014: 1.07 %
Jan. 2015 / Jan. 2014: 0.41%
Feb. 2015 / Feb. 2014: 0.40%
Mar. 2015 / Mar. 2014: 0.79%
Apr. 2015 / Apr. 2014: 0.65%
May 2015 / May 2014: 1.16%
Jun. 2015 / Jun. 2014: – 1.55%
Jul. 2015 / Jul. 2014: – 1.67%
Aug. 2015 / Aug. 2014: -1.87%
Sep.2015 / Sep. 2014: – 1.73%
Tax deductible loan interest rate
RON: 1.75%
EUR: 6%