Romania's tax agency head Dragos Doros resigns

The president of the fiscal administration agency ANAF, Dragos Doros, has stepped down, according to sources quoted by media.

Doros, who was named head of ANAF in March 2016, resigned shortly after the minister of Finance, Viorel Stefan, said that the government would start to evaluate the performance of the current management team of the tax body.

“I think it is extremely important for the ANAF to work well, so that the collection rate of taxes can be high,” said PM Sorin Grindeanu.

This week, minister Stefan had asked ANAF to scrap Form 088 for the reimbursement of VAT, which has been heavily criticised by the business environment. The representatives of firms said that they had to answer to a lot of time consuming questions that were not directly linked to the VAT in this form.

UPDATE: Key Move. Bogdan Nicolae Stan replaces Doros as ANAF head

Form 088 was rolled out in February 2015, when the ANAF was led by Gelu Diaconu, who is currently on trial in a corruption case.

Doros was one of the private sector representatives that accepted to work for a public institution. Before joining ANAF, he was working for professional services firm KPMG.

The improvement of Romania’s tax collection has been mentioned by public authorities in the last few years as a priority, but the country remains among the European Union state with a poor collection rate.

According to Eurostat, the statistics office of the EU, Romania’s tax collection accounted for 28 percent of GDP in 2015, up from 27.5 percent in the previous year. Meanwhile, the EU 28 average stood at 40 percent last year.

The ANAF has an ongoing modernization program, backed by a World Bank loan, designed to improve the collection rate, which includes the roll out of a complex IT system and the additional training of tax officers. It should be fully operational by 2019.