Tax Agency Focusing on Romanian Crypto Traders

Investors in Romania who did not report the revenue generated from crypto trading, nor paid taxes on it, are now being targeted by authorities. According to the tax body of Romania, this offensive has been launched to ensure that people keep up with financial trends. The authority also disclosed that they had been able to identify undeclared crypto gains of about €50 million.

Taxing crypto revenues

Last week, the National Agency for Fiscal Administration (ANAF) in Romania announced that officials belonging to its department responsible for preventing tax fraud and invasion had launched an inspection. Their focus was the revenues generated from crypto trading on different platforms, such as FTX, Bitmart, Maiar, Kucoin and Binance.

The tax authority said that these checks were part of their effort to keep up with the evolution of trends in the financial markets and technology. ANAF said that 63 citizens in Romania had been targeted and these people had generated crypto trading revenues worth €131 million between 2016 and 2021.

Reports indicated that the tax inspectors had discovered that the tax returns they had received did not include crypto assets that were valued at €48.67 million. So far, recovery of unfulfilled tax obligations of about €2.10 million has already been ordered by the taxation authority. Meanwhile, the ANAF disclosed that crypto trading gains that had been declared correctly amounted to €15 million and individuals had paid the income tax and other social contributions associated with them.

Other crypto operations

It was further added by the Romanian tax authority that they would also check revenues generated via other crypto-related activities, such as trading and mining of non-fungible tokens (NFTs). The taxation agency stated that its aim was to ensure the compliance of taxpayers voluntarily and to give budget receipts a boost.

The anti-fraud department of ANAF has recommended that everyone in the country who is engaged in the crypto space, or plans on doing so should pay their fiscal obligations and report their revenues to the state.

EU rules to bring change

As of now, the crypto space in Romania is regulated by national authorities and laws, but businesses and investors will have to deal with changes in the legal environment significantly. This is because Romania is part of Europe and the EU-wide rules developed for the crypto industry would be applicable to the people in Romania as well.

A set of anti-money laundering (AML) rules had been agreed upon by the European Council, the European Commission and the European parliament. Likewise, they also gave approval for a legislative package referred to as MiCA i.e. the Markets in Crypto Assets. This is expected to be implemented in 2024 and the all 27 members of the European Union would have to abide by these rules.

Of course, this means that Romanian crypto traders and investors would also be subjected to these new rules, some of which have earned a lot of criticism from the crypto community in Europe, as they are regarded as too tough.