An assessment of several million lei can collapse on a single error of method. Without a competent counter-calculation, the judge in tax litigation or the prosecutor in the criminal file hears a single technical voice, that of whoever produced the contested calculation. And a single technical voice, left unchallenged, tends to become the “truth” of the file. The one who challenges it is the party-appointed tax expert.
This article opens a group of analyses dedicated to the party-appointed tax expert. We define the role here, distinguish it from the expert appointed by the court or by the criminal investigation body, and explain why its presence concretely changes the balance of forces.
Who can be a party-appointed tax expert. The role can be filled by a tax adviser, a member of the Chamber of Tax Advisers (CCF), a profession organised under O.G. nr. 71/2001, as amended by O.U.G. nr. 49/2025, or by an accounting expert, a member of CECCAR, a profession organised under O.G. nr. 65/1994. For related specialisations, such as valuations, the court-appointed technical expert intervenes, organised under O.G. nr. 2/2000.
Forensic tax expert evidence appears, under Article 3(1)(g) of O.G. nr. 71/2001, among the activities of the tax adviser. Carrying it out requires registration in the Register of active tax advisers and in the records of the Ministry of Justice, and the qualification is evidenced by the professional card of tax adviser, forensic tax expert, issued by the Chamber. The regime currently in force is set out in the Norms approved by Decision no. 2/2026 of the Chamber of Tax Advisers, published in the Official Gazette no. 112 of 11 February 2026.
The party-appointed tax expert is the technical specialist, a tax adviser or an accounting expert, engaged by a party (the taxpayer, the defendant, sometimes by the lawyer or the accountant on the client's behalf) to analyse, challenge and technically reformulate the claims of the tax authority or of the prosecution. The expert is not a lawyer and does not argue points of law. The expert is not a witness and does not testify about facts personally perceived. The expert works on a single ground: the figure, the calculation method, the tax base, the correctness of the tax treatment applied to a transaction.
The role takes two forms, depending on whether the case is or is not before a court.
Before and outside the proceedings: the preventive audit ahead of an inspection, the technical position statement on the draft inspection report, the out-of-court expert report attached to the administrative appeal. Here the expert works freely, on the client's direct instructions.
In proceedings, where the intervention takes a precise procedural form: expert-adviser to the party in tax litigation, or party-recommended expert in criminal proceedings. The expert works alongside an expert report ordered by the court or by the judicial body, which the expert has the right to follow and to challenge from within.
The distinction is essential for realistic expectations: out of court, the party's report is a defence document that you control entirely; in court, evidential weight belongs to the official expert report, and the role of the party-appointed expert is to check its quality and, where necessary, to prompt it to be redone.
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.
The most common confusion is to think that “expert” means one single thing. In reality, in a case with real stakes, two figures coexist with different legal standing.
The court-appointed expert, appointed by the court in civil matters, or by the criminal investigation body or the court in criminal matters, is, by status, independent of the parties. This expert's report is a means of evidence with its own evidential weight: the judge may adopt it directly. This is precisely why the method this expert chooses often decides the fate of the figure.
The party-appointed expert is engaged and paid by a party, and this expert's declared mission is to defend that party's position on technical grounds. This expert's powers differ depending on the procedure.
Under Article 330(5) of the Code of Civil Procedure, the party may appoint an expert, approved by the court, with the status of expert-adviser to the party. This expert takes part in the expert report ordered by the court, may provide information, put questions and observations and, where appropriate, draw up a separate report. The adviser's observations carry no evidential weight of their own, but may lead the court to require the official report to be clarified or redone.
Under Articles 172 to 181 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, the expert report is ordered by the judicial body, and Article 173(4) grants the parties the right to request that a recommended expert of their own take part in carrying out the expert report, a specialist who takes part in the official work and can influence its method and conclusions from within.
The two roles are not mutually exclusive and are not “adverse” to the law: the party-appointed expert has precisely the function of checking the technical quality of the court-appointed expert, within a system that presupposes an adversarial process. The Constitutional Court has, moreover, confirmed that the provisions on the participation of the party expert are constitutional.
The tax authority and the prosecutor never come only with a legal position; they come with a technical calculation, the tax inspection report, the findings report of the anti-fraud specialist, the specialist expert report. This calculation has the appearance of objectivity because it is expressed in figures. Without a competent counter-calculation, the entire case is built on a single technical reading of the facts.
The party-appointed tax expert breaks this uniqueness. The expert does not say “this is not correct”, a statement any judge hears as pleading, but demonstrates, technically, where and why the method fails.
Whether the indirect estimate was justified, or whether documents existed that allowed the base to be established directly.
Whether non-taxable amounts, refunds, transfers between the same person's own accounts, or loans were included in the taxable base.
Whether the margin from a small sample was legitimately applied to the whole period and to non-homogeneous transactions.
Whether the same income was taxed twice, a frequent error in large-scale reconstructions.
Whether an expense that was rejected was, in reality, deductible, or whether a transaction was recharacterised without grounds.
A concrete example shows the mechanism. In a reconstruction by estimate, the inspection treated all receipts into the shareholder's account as untaxed income of the company. The party-appointed expert separated out, from the bank statements, repayments of a loan previously granted to the company, transfers between the same person's own accounts, and amounts already invoiced and taxed in earlier periods, and showed that the real base was a fraction of the estimated one. No new legal theory was needed, only someone to read the documents correctly and redo the addition.
In tax procedure, the burden of proof rests on the taxpayer (Article 73 of the Tax Procedure Code): the taxpayer must prove the acts and facts underlying their position. The party-appointed expert turns the statement “the amount is wrong” into a documented alternative calculation, which the court must weigh. The effect is not rhetorical but procedural: the dispute moves from emotional ground to technical ground, where it can be won. In litigation, the counter-calculation supports the “serious doubt” required for suspension of enforcement and becomes evidence on the merits; in criminal proceedings, it attacks the very foundation of the prosecution's case, the amount of the loss.
The timing of the intervention matters at least as much as its quality. The party-appointed expert can act throughout, but the marginal value of the intervention falls with every stage that is lost.
The audit ahead of an inspection identifies vulnerabilities while there is still time for them to be corrected or documented.
The expert follows the findings in real time and prepares the position statement on the draft report (Article 130 of the Tax Procedure Code). See also the expert's intervention during the inspection.
An out-of-court tax expert report, attached to the appeal against the tax assessment decision, recalculates the base and dismantles the methodology.
As expert-adviser to the party (Article 330(5) of the Code of Civil Procedure), alongside the court-ordered expert report.
As party-recommended expert (Articles 172 to 181 of the Code of Criminal Procedure), in establishing the loss through a specialist expert report, see the role in the criminal file.
NOTE: The party-appointed tax expert is not a luxury reserved for the end of the case. Brought in late, after the tax assessment decision has been issued or after the case has been sent to trial, the expert inherits a file in which the taxable base has already been fixed, the documents have already been handed over, and the statements have already been given. The ground on which the figure is won is the stage at which it is set, not the stage at which it is challenged.
A serious technical defence begins with its limits correctly acknowledged.
An expert who rules on intent, bad faith or guilt goes beyond the brief and is doing law, not expert work, and the conclusion becomes, on that point, unusable. The expert answers technical questions, not legal ones.
Any professional who promises a particular outcome should be viewed with reservation. The expert improves the quality of the defence and the probability of a correct outcome on the figure; the expert does not sell certainties.
A technical report cannot cover for the absence of objective evidence. On VAT, the CJEU held, in case C-664/16 Vădan, that the right to deduct cannot be granted solely on the basis of an estimate from an expert report, in the absence of invoices. The expert report reorders and interprets existing evidence; it does not create it.
The term “party-appointed tax expert” describes a role, not a single title. Behind it stand distinctly regulated professions.
A member of the Chamber of Tax Advisers (CCF), a profession organised under O.G. nr. 71/2001 (as amended by O.U.G. nr. 49/2025). Forensic tax expert evidence is carried out only by tax advisers who hold the status of forensic tax expert, registered with the Ministry of Justice.
A member of CECCAR, a profession organised under O.G. nr. 65/1994. The accounting expert carries out accounting expert reports, including accounting expert reports with a tax component.
Organised under O.G. nr. 2/2000, relevant for related specialisations (valuations, specialist technical expert reports).
Choosing the right profession depends on the real nature of the issue, a distinction so often ignored that we devote to it a separate analysis of tax expert reports as against accounting expert reports.
In a case with real stakes, the lawyer and the tax expert do not replace each other, they complete each other. The lawyer builds the strategy, manages the time limits, raises the pleas of nullity and the objections, and argues the law. The expert lays the factual foundation on which the legal defence rests: recalculating the base, dismantling the method, translating the file from accounting-and-tax language into verifiable arguments. A lawyer without technical support argues against a figure that cannot be attacked at its root; an expert without legal direction produces an excellent report that, procedurally, arrives too late or beside the correct question.
The typical case we opened with closes exactly here: the assessment of millions falls not because the lawyer spoke well, but because someone showed, figure by figure, that the sample, the margin and the extrapolation do not hold up, and the lawyer turned that demonstration into a ground of unlawfulness. We set out the concrete way these roles are divided in the analysis dedicated to lawyer-expert collaboration, and we discuss separately the specific position of the accountant defending their own client.
No. By definition, the expert is party-appointed: you engage and pay the expert to defend your position on technical grounds. It is the expert appointed by the court or by the judicial body who is independent. This does not diminish the value of the party-appointed expert; on the contrary, the expert's rigour and professional quality are exactly what gives weight to the expert's observations and stops the expert from being easily dismissed as an “interested party”.
No, whenever a court-appointed expert exists. In proceedings, evidential weight belongs to the expert report ordered by the court or by the judicial body; the observations and the report of the party-appointed expert have a guiding role, prompting the official report to be clarified or redone and giving the judge a second technical reading. Out of court, at the inspection stage and in the appeal, the party's report is the central technical document of the defence.
Yes, and in cases with real stakes it is advisable. The roles are distinct and complementary: the lawyer on law and strategy, the expert on figures and method. Coordinating them from day one is, as a rule, what distinguishes a defence that is built from one that is improvised.
Never completely, but the value falls with every stage. After the tax assessment decision has been issued or the case has been sent to trial, the base has already been set and some of the ground is already lost. Ideally, the expert gets involved from the inspection stage, or even preventively, before any inspection at all.
Informative material, updated on 18 July 2026. It does not constitute legal or tax advice; individual situations must be assessed on their own facts.
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.