The possibility to revoke the settlement decision by the issuing authority and other amendments to the Fiscal Procedure Code

The most important proposed amendments regarding the Fiscal Procedure Code- brought by the Project of the Government Emergency Ordinance regarding the regulation of certain fiscal-budgetary measures published by Ministry of Public Finance on March, 26-  refer to the competence of solving the administrative appeal against receivable deeds as well as any other tax administrative acts issued by the central tax authority and to the possibility to revoke the settlement decision by the issuing authority.

Further, we have summarized the main proposed amendments.

The main proposed amendments to Law no. 207/2015 regarding the Fiscal Procedure Code (hereinafter “CPF”) are the following:

• A new scenario is introduced where the taxpayer which is not a resident for tax purposes in Romania and needs to submit statements with the tax authorities is no longer required to designate a proxy, resident for tax purposes in Romania, to fulfill, in his name and from his patrimony, his obligations to the tax authorities. This scenario applies in case of distance communication by electronic means between taxpayer and the tax authorities according to art. 79 CPF;
• An express term is provided of no more than 5 days as from the date of reception of the administrative appeal, in which the tax authority who has issued the challenged fiscal administrative act prepares the case file for the administrative appeal and the report with proposed solutions and sends these documents to the competent settlement authority. This proposed amendment is planned to apply starting with 1.06.2019;
• The competence of solving the administrative appeals against the receivable deeds as well as any other tax administrative acts issued by the central tax authority will be taken over from the National Agency for Fiscal Administration to the Ministry of Public Finance starting with 1.06.2019. Pending administrative appeals on 1.06.2019 will be transferred and settled by the Specialized Settlement Body from the Ministry of Public Finance;
• The tax authority competent to solve the administrative appeal will have the possibility to revoke its decision, at the request of the tax payer, in the following situations:

a) the tax authority did not apply certain legal provisions to the case which would have fundamentally changed the settlement decision;

b) after the issuance of the settlement decision by the Settlement Body, a decision is issued by the Central Tax Commission which offers another interpretation of the legal provisions applicable to the case;

c) before or after issuing the settlement decision by the Settlement Body a court decision by the High Court of Cassation and Justice, in interpretation of the law or an appeal in the interest of the law, is rendered, which provides a different solution for the problem analysed in the administrative appeal than the solution included in the settlement decision;

d) before or after issuing the settlement decision by the Settlement Body a decision of the Court of Justice of the European Union is issued which obviously is contrary with the settlement decision of the administrative appeal    

First sanction imposed under the General Data Protection Regulation in Poland

The Polish DPA imposed a fine of PLN 943 000 (around €220 000) to a company in Poland for breaching the obligation to inform the data subjects in accordance with Article 14 of the GDPR (information to be provided where personal data have not been obtained from the data subject).

The case concerned the collection of data by a company from publicly available registers, for the purpose of its own business activity.

With respect to the obligation to inform the data subjects, the company fulfilled this obligation only in relation to the persons who provided also their e-mails. In the case of persons where the company did not held an e-mail address (but only phone or postal address), due to operational costs, the information was only made available on the company’s website. The company claimed high operational costs and argued that the provision of such information proves impossible or would involve a disproportionate effort, thus falling under the exceptions provided by Article 14 para. 5 of the GDPR.

The DPA considered that the action of the company was insufficient and did not satisfy the requirements under Article 14. In the opinion of the DPA, it appears that the company should have fulfilled the obligation to inform the data subjects by post or phone, since it had such contact details and that the exception provided by article 14 para. 5 of the GDPR was not applicable in this case.