Two symmetrical failures keep recurring in complex tax cases. In one, a lawyer who is very good on the law builds an impeccable procedural defence, but loses on the figures. In the other, an expert produces a rigorous counter-calculation, but no one translates it into law. Both have the same cause: a single level of expertise where the case needs two. Here is how the roles divide between the lawyer and the tax expert, and why their coordination decides the cases that matter.
A tax evasion case or a serious tax dispute is, by its nature, hybrid. It has a tax component, the tax base, deductibility, VAT, late-payment charges (accesorii: interest and penalties), the amount of the loss, and a legal component, whether the conduct matches the offence, guilt, the lawfulness of the evidence, nullities, the legal characterisation. The two condition each other: the correct figure for the loss can change the characterisation, and a procedural nullity can remove from the file precisely the evidence the figure rests on.
ÎCCJ (Înta Curte de Casație și Justiție, Romania’s High Court of Cassation and Justice) Decision no. 430/2025 showed how closely the two are linked: in tax evasion cases, the specialist expert report on the loss has become a condition for the lawfulness of the indictment. Making use of this tool requires, at the same time, technical competence (knowing what the expert report must contain) and procedural competence (knowing how to raise its absence at the preliminary chamber stage). The interface between law and figures is exactly where cases are lost: where the lawyer thinks it is a calculation problem and the expert thinks it is a legal problem, a gap opens that no one addresses.
The collaboration works because each works towards the same strategy, but from their own position. The dividing line is clear: the expert says “how much” and “how it was calculated”; the lawyer says “what it means in law” and “how it is used procedurally”.
The legal characterisation (what offence or what unlawfulness is at issue); procedural nullities and objections at the preliminary chamber stage; strategy, the order of moves, what is raised and when; the closing argument and the relationship with the court.
The calculation methodology; the tax base and the late-payment charges (accesorii), what is included, what is excluded, with what documents; the counter-expert report and objections to the official report; the technical objectives and reconstructing the records.
A good collaboration does not start once the official report has already been filed, but much earlier. This sequence is what separates a defence that is built from one that is improvised.
The lawyer and the expert read the file from the outset, each with their own eye. What is a procedural defect for the lawyer is a calculation error for the expert, and vice versa.
The expert analyses the technical side (the base, the loss, the documents); the lawyer analyses the legal side (nullities, characterisation, evidence).
The two analyses come together into a single plan: what is challenged on procedure, what is dismantled on the figures, and in what order.
The expert drafts the technical objectives and the objections to the official report; the lawyer frames them procedurally and files them at the right moment.
The expert (a tax adviser) builds the technical position on the findings; the lawyer watches over compliance with procedure. This is where the foundations are laid; what is not documented now is hard to recover later.
The expert supplies the counter-calculation; the lawyer builds the grounds of unlawfulness against the contested tax assessment decision (decizie de impunere).
Court-appointed expert evidence (expertiză judiciară) ordered by the court, backed up by the party’s expert-adviser; the lawyer drafts the objectives and translates the conclusions into grounds for annulment, within the evidence in tax litigation.
The specialist expert report on the loss (a condition for the lawfulness of the indictment, ÎCCJ 430/2025) and the expert recommended by the party, together with the nullity objections in the defence in a tax evasion case.
The lawyer coordinates the strategy, deciding the order of procedural moves and bearing responsibility for the relationship with the court. But the expert is technically autonomous: no one dictates their conclusion, because a “commissioned” conclusion shows and collapses at the first objection. Coordination means the lawyer decides when and how a technical conclusion is used, without interfering with its content. Mutual trust is the underlying condition: the lawyer must be able to rely on the figures holding up, and the expert, on their work being used correctly, without being distorted.
The confidentiality of communications between the client, the lawyer and the expert is not an administrative detail. When the expert is engaged through the lawyer, rather than directly by the client, the communications and working papers fall under the umbrella of the lawyer’s professional secrecy: Legea nr. 51/1995 provides for the inviolability of professional documents and working papers held by the lawyer and requires the lawyer to make their collaborators observe secrecy.
It must be said honestly, however, that Romanian law does not enshrine a “litigation privilege” identical to that in common law systems: there is no provision that expressly extends such protection to the working report and the communications of the party-appointed expert. The real protection derives from the lawyer’s professional secrecy (Legea nr. 51/1995) and covers those aspects that fall under the umbrella of the lawyer’s work. Hence the practical rule: the party-appointed expert is engaged through the lawyer, and working documents are kept separate from those intended for filing.
The lawyer’s fee and the expert’s fee are separate, they are distinct professions, with distinct contracts. It must be made clear from the start who pays for what, especially for court-appointed expert evidence, which is ordered by the court: its cost is, as a rule, advanced by the party requesting it (or as directed by the court), and the expense can later be included in the costs of proceedings, recoverable from the losing party.
The party’s expert-adviser is paid for by the party who appointed them (Article 330(5) of the Code of Civil Procedure), the costs also being capable of inclusion in the costs of proceedings. Confusion between “court-appointed expert evidence” (the court’s) and “the party-appointed expert” (the client’s) produces the most frequent financial misunderstandings, which is why it needs to be explained at the outset.
The client hires an expert without a lawyer to frame the conclusions; the report, however good, remains without procedural effect.
A solid legal defence that loses on the figures, because no one challenges the prosecution’s calculation.
The expert report is admitted, but the objectives are poorly drafted, copied from the appeal, pushed into questions of law, and the report ends up answering nothing useful.
The lawyer and the expert work in parallel, not together; the legal strategy and the technical strategy never meet.
The best argument for collaboration is its result. The typical combination: the lawyer raises a procedural nullity that weakens or removes an essential piece of evidence from the file, and the expert dismantles the loss, showing that a significant part of the amount comes from real transactions, with documents that were ignored. Each move supports the other: a lower figure makes the nullity more relevant, and the excluded evidence makes the prosecution’s figure more fragile. Together, they can lead to an acquittal, a more lenient characterisation, or the annulment of the tax act.
The ideal case is the one where the two areas of expertise meet in a single coordination. A professional who is simultaneously a lawyer and tax adviser sees the case from both angles from the first reading: recognising both the procedural defect and the calculation error, drafting the technical objectives without losing sight of their legal effect, and translating the expert conclusion directly into argument. This does not replace either the independent court-appointed expert or teamwork, but it reduces the losses at the interface between law and figures, where most cases are lost. A complex case is not won with a single brilliant specialist, but with a coordination in which the law and the figures pull in the same direction.
Because in a tax case the stakes also play out on the figures. An excellent lawyer on procedure can lose if no one technically challenges the prosecution’s loss. The court is left with the only figure presented. The technical component calls for an expert; the legal component calls for a lawyer; the case calls for both.
As a rule, through the lawyer, so that the preparatory analyses benefit from the umbrella of the lawyer’s professional secrecy (Legea nr. 51/1995) and so that the technical and legal strategies are coordinated from the start. Direct engagement, without a lawyer, leaves the technical conclusions without a procedural translation.
Court-appointed expert evidence is ordered by the court, and the cost is, as a rule, advanced by the party requesting it or as directed by the court; the expense can later be recovered, as part of the costs of proceedings, from the losing party. The party’s expert-adviser is paid for by the party who appointed them.
The lawyer coordinates the strategy and the relationship with the court; the expert remains technically autonomous. Coordination does not mean the lawyer dictates the expert’s conclusion, a commissioned conclusion collapses at the first objection. The lawyer decides when and how a conclusion is used; the expert is responsible for its content.
Informative material, updated on 18 July 2026. It does not constitute legal or tax advice; individual situations must be assessed on their own facts.
If the file contains a calculation that needs checking, the other analyses are grouped under the party-appointed tax expert. For the technical role in the defence, see tax expert evidence.
Time limits run from the date of communication. A first conversation clarifies what is being alleged, what you need to substantiate and how the defence is built, before an estimate becomes a tax assessment decision.