088 Form – The VAT Registration Russian Roulette

Since the beginning of 2015, a number of legislative changes were enforced regarding the VAT registration of Romanian companies established in accordance with Company Law no. 31/1990.

As recent practice has shown, these changes have the potential to cause serious issues for Romanian companies since they introduce the concept "of assessing one's intention and capability to carry out a business activity" as an essential criterion for approving VAT registration applications or, as it will be shown in the following paragraphs, for maintaining existing VAT registration numbers.

Form 088 introduced by OPANAF 17/2015

Firstly, we believe that we are dealing with a procedure that has not been analysed rigorously enough by the Romanian tax authorities (hereinafter the "RTA") since, as of 1 February 2015, the assessment of the abovementioned intention and capability is made automatically via a special declaration - form 088, submitted together with the VAT