Almost every tax inspection starts the same way: with a list of requested documents. Registers, contracts, invoices, bank statements, business correspondence, sometimes for periods five or six years back. At that point, the question “what is ANAF allowed to ask me for?” becomes a practical one. And the even more uncomfortable question, “what happens to me if I no longer have them?”, receives, in the Tax Procedure Code, precise and far from comfortable answers.
The general basis is Article 64 of the Tax Procedure Code: in order to establish the factual tax position, the taxpayer must make registers, records, business documents and any other papers available to the tax authority. Within the inspection, Article 113 completes the picture: the inspection authority examines the documents in the tax file, checks the consistency between the returns and the accounting records, and may request information from third parties.
Mandatory registers, trial balances, sales and purchase journals, account cards, supporting documents, invoices, receipts, delivery notes, returns.
Civil and commercial, including addenda and annexes.
Bank statements, including for foreign accounts.
Offers, orders, e-mails relevant to the reality of the transactions, part of the “business documents” referred to in Article 64.
Payroll records and personnel files, in inspections concerning contributions.
SAF-T files, archives of electronic invoices and, under Article 109, even the software applications used to generate the records.
There are also limits. The request must relate to the periods and tax obligations covered by the inspection, as delimited by the notice of inspection (aviz de inspecție fiscală) (Article 122). Documents are presented, at the tax authority's choice, at its premises or at the taxpayer's tax domicile, and the tax authority may retain documents, on the basis of written proof, for 30 days at most, or, in exceptional cases, with the approval of the head of the tax authority, for 90 days at most, with the taxpayer entitled to request copies of the retained documents (Article 64(4) to (5)).
Also worth noting is the context of 2026: through SAF-T (mandatory, from January 2025, for all categories of taxpayers), RO e-Factura, the national electronic invoicing system, and the international exchange of information, ANAF already holds a significant part of your data before asking for anything. Requests for documents are increasingly used to cross-check the data already held against the taxpayer's records, which means gaps and mismatches are spotted immediately.
The current rule, in force since the amendment of the Accounting Law (Legea nr. 82/1991) by Legea nr. 36/2023: the mandatory accounting registers and the supporting documents underlying entries in the financial accounts are kept for 5 years, calculated from 1 July of the year following the closing of the financial year in which they were drawn up, including payroll records.
They remain subject to the old time limits: 10 years for financial and accounting documents, and 50 years for payroll records. The new 5-year limit does not “amnesty” the old archive.
The related documents are kept for the period the asset is in use, where that exceeds 5 years.
Employees' personnel files and employment contracts, 75 years, under Annex 6 to the National Archives Law (Legea nr. 16/1996), precisely because they serve to establish pension entitlements.
Property transactions, loans between affiliates, carried-forward tax losses, VAT, keep the documents beyond the legal minimum. The cost of storage is trivial compared with the cost of an estimate.
WARNING. The 5-year retention period and the 5-year tax limitation period (prescripție) do not overlap perfectly. The limitation period (Article 110 CPF) runs from 1 July of the year following the one for which the obligation is owed and can be suspended or interrupted; an inspection started within the time limit can lawfully cover documents that, arithmetically, you might be tempted to consider “expired”.
Under Article 8 of the Tax Procedure Code, the official language of the tax administration is Romanian. Supporting documents and certificates drawn up in a foreign language must, at the tax authority's request, be accompanied by Romanian translations certified by translators authorised by the Ministry of Justice, and, for languages with no authorised translators in Romania, by translations made or certified by the embassy or consulate of the state concerned.
The sanction is drastic: documents filed without a translation, even though one was requested, are not taken into account. The contract with the German partner or the statement from the Swiss bank become, legally, non-existent in the inspection file. For important foreign contracts, all the more so in cases involving income from abroad, order the translations early, not in the final days of the inspection.
If the facts are not clarified on the basis of the documents submitted by the taxpayer, the tax authority is entitled to request documents and information from other persons (Article 64(1), Article 58): business partners, including through cross-checks, credit institutions, notaries, and Romanian and foreign authorities.
In practice, the invoice you can no longer find generally still exists with the issuer; the bank statement, at the bank; the contract, with the other contracting party. The conclusion cuts both ways: the absence of your documents rarely stops ANAF from reconstructing the transactions, but the version reconstructed from external sources will be interpreted against whoever failed to keep the evidence.
When it cannot determine the correct tax position, the tax authority sets the tax base by reasonable estimate (Article 106 CPF). The methods: the source and use of funds, cash flows, the margin, the product/service and volume, and net worth (OPANAF nr. 3389/2011).
Supporting documents constitute evidence (Article 72), and the taxpayer bears the burden of proving the acts and facts underlying their returns (Article 73(1)). Without documents, the returns remain mere assertions.
Failing to make registers and documents available is an administrative offence (contravenție) (Article 336(1)(c) CPF).
An unjustified refusal to present documents, aimed at obstructing the checks, and failing to reconstruct destroyed documents, are separate offences under Legea nr. 241/2005.
The estimate, in detail. For individuals subject to the review of personal tax status, the indirect methods from OPANAF nr. 675/2018 apply. The tax authority must state, in the assessment act, the reasons and the criteria for the estimate, fertile ground for a defence, but only if you make use of it in an administrative appeal (contestație). Separately, where returns are not filed, Article 107 allows an ex officio assessment; the decision thus issued is cancelled if you file the return within 60 days of communication. And for the differences established by the tax authority, in addition to interest, the non-declaration penalty of 0.08% per day is owed (Article 181 CPF), increased where evasion is found.
Deductions without documents are lost. The starkest example comes from VAT: in case C-664/16 Vădan, the Court of Justice of the EU held that the right to deduct cannot be granted solely on the basis of an estimate from an expert report, in the absence of invoices or other objective documents. In other words, your income can be estimated upwards, but deductions without documents are lost, an asymmetry that explains why the amounts in decisions sometimes turn out to be huge.
The fines, in concrete terms. The administrative offence at Article 336(1)(c) CPF is punishable by a fine of 25,000 to 27,000 lei for medium-sized and large taxpayers, and 6,000 to 8,000 lei for other legal persons and for individuals. Failing to keep and archive accounting documents constitutes, separately, an administrative offence under the Accounting Law: Article 41(2)(c) of Legea nr. 82/1991 penalises non-compliance with the rules on drawing up, using, keeping and archiving supporting and accounting documents, as well as reconstructing documents that have been lost, stolen or destroyed, with a fine of 300 to 4,000 lei (Article 42(1)).
The criminal side. Two offences under Legea nr. 241/2005 are directly relevant. Article 4: an unjustified refusal to present the legal documents and the assets to the competent authorities, aimed at obstructing financial, tax or customs checks, within 15 days at most of the formal demand (somație), is punishable by imprisonment from 1 to 6 years. Article 3: the act of a taxpayer who fails to reconstruct destroyed accounting records within the time limit stated in the inspection documents, although able to do so, imprisonment from 6 months to 5 years. The line between “I can no longer find the documents” and “I refuse to present them” must be managed with the utmost care and, as a rule, with specialist assistance.
The loss, theft or destruction of financial and accounting documents is not a dead end: OMFP nr. 2634/2015 governs their reconstruction.
In writing, to the head of the entity, from the moment the loss is discovered; the duty rests with whoever discovers the situation.
Within 30 days at most of the discovery (in the event of force majeure, fire, flood, 90 days from when it ends), together with the minutes recording the circumstances and, where applicable, proof that the criminal investigation bodies have been notified.
For documents originating from third parties, reconstruction is done by obtaining a copy from the issuer; banks issue duplicate statements; invoices sent through RO e-Factura are retrieved from the system, through the SPV.
Marked visibly, stating the number and date of the reconstruction order; only then do the documents again become a valid legal basis for the accounting entries.
Those drawn up by the entity are redone following the same procedures as the original, marked to show they have been reconstructed.
Once you have received a time limit set out in the inspection documents, the clock has started, and postponement is no longer an administrative option.
WARNING. Reconstruction carried out on your own initiative, before the inspection, is evidence of good faith. The same reconstruction, refused or delayed after the inspection has given you notice of a time limit, can become an element of the offence under Article 3 of Legea nr. 241/2005.
Not every request must be satisfied unconditionally, but how you refuse makes the difference between exercising a right and committing an administrative offence (or worse).
Justified refusal exists, essentially, in two situations. The first: professional secrecy. Under Article 67 CPF, lawyers, tax advisers, auditors, chartered accountants, doctors, psychotherapists and priests may refuse to provide information about matters they became aware of in the course of their professional activity; their assistants and the persons taking part in that professional activity are treated the same way. The limit: these professionals cannot refuse information about their own tax obligations, and, except for priests, they may provide the information if the holder of the secret consents. A law firm subject to a tax inspection therefore presents its own records and invoices, but not the content of its clients' files.
The second situation: requests unrelated to the subject matter of the inspection, documents outside the period or the tax obligations stated in the notice of inspection, or requests plainly disproportionate to the purpose of the review.
Always, within the time limit granted. Do not ignore the request: silence is not an objection, it is an administrative offence in the making.
Professional secrecy, the lack of any connection with the period or the taxes under review, an objective impossibility, and reconstruction steps already under way. Hand over everything that is not disputed.
Ask for the time limit to be extended and for your position to be recorded; if the abusive request persists, notify the superior hierarchical authority and reserve the argument for the appeal against the acts issued.
A verbal refusal, silence, and undisclosed selective handover are the worst possible options.
Yes, to the extent it relates to the subject matter of the inspection: business correspondence forms part of the “business documents” referred to in Article 64 of the Tax Procedure Code and is frequently used to check whether transactions are genuine. Correspondence with your lawyer, however, remains protected by professional secrecy.
No, not as a rule. Following the amendment of the Accounting Law by Legea nr. 36/2023, the period is 5 years from 1 July of the year following the closing of the financial year, including for payroll records. Be careful, though: documents drawn up before 1 January 2023 remain subject to the old time limits (10 and 50 years, respectively), and documents relating to fixed assets are kept for as long as the asset is in use.
Your income and obligations can be established by estimate (Article 106), but deductions, VAT in particular, are lost in the absence of documents, under the case law of the CJEU (case C-664/16 Vădan). The solution is reconstruction: duplicates from suppliers, statements from banks, invoices from the RO e-Factura system. Start the process immediately, not after receiving the draft report.
Yes. Failing to present documents by the stated deadline may be sanctioned as an administrative offence (Article 336 CPF), and if the delay turns into a refusal after a formal demand, the matter can shift onto the ground of Article 4 of Legea nr. 241/2005. If the deadline is objectively too short, ask in writing for an extension, with reasons; the practice of the tax authorities is generally to grant it.
Informative material, updated on 17 July 2026. It does not constitute legal or tax advice; individual situations must be assessed on their own facts.
If you have an inspection under way or have just received a notification, the related analyses are grouped under tax inspection and the review of individuals. For how such matters are handled, see tax assistance.
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.