Two taxpayers challenge two almost identical tax assessment decisions in court. The first wins, the second loses. The difference lay neither in the lawyers nor in the judge, but in a technical document of a few lines, drafted months before the hearings: the objectives of the expert report. A tax dispute is often won here, quietly, long before closing arguments.
The route is well known: the tax assessment decision is first challenged through an administrative appeal against the tax assessment decision, and if that is rejected, the act is challenged through an action to annul the tax assessment decision, before the administrative court. At the administrative stage, the case is played on paperwork; in court, it is played on evidence.
In disputes where the stakes are a figure, a tax base, an adjustment, a refused right of deduction, the prime piece of evidence is, almost invariably, the court-ordered tax expert report. The court does not have the technical competence to redo a VAT calculation involving intra-Community transactions, or an estimate made through indirect methods; it appoints an expert to do so. The moment the court allows the expert report is, for that reason, the decisive moment of the case, and, at the same time, the most poorly used.
The objectives of the expert report are the questions the expert must answer. If the question is good, the answer can win the case; if it is poor, the report is useless however competent the expert may be. A detail many miss: the objectives are not set by the court of its own motion, but proposed by the parties; whoever formulates the better objectives steers the report.
A correct objective requires the expert to check something concrete and technical. Here are the types that produce a useful report, each with a technical verb and a measurable object, none of them asking for a legal opinion:
To establish whether the calculation method used by the tax authority complies with the applicable rules, and to identify any errors in its application. The expert dismantles the mechanism; he does not comment on lawfulness.
To recalculate the base and the liabilities from the documents in the file, indicating the differences from the tax authority's calculation and the cause of each. An alternative figure, documented.
To establish whether the documents filed by the taxpayer were taken into account, and what effect they have on the tax base if they are factored in.
To check how the interest and penalties were calculated, and whether the sums set correspond to the findings.
The wrong counterpart is the objective that asks the expert to decide the dispute, “to establish whether the tax authority lawfully refused the deduction”, or the vague objective (“to analyse the company's tax situation”), which produces pages with no usable conclusion. Both waste a year of proceedings.
Warning: the word that ruins the objective. The most common wrong objective in tax litigation is the one containing “lawfully” or “correctly”: it transfers to the expert a legal judgment he cannot make. Formulate objectives that call for checking a method, reworking a calculation, or identifying an ignored document, never ruling on the lawfulness of the act.
And keep the time limits in mind: if the report is flawed by a wrong premise, a new expert report must be requested, with reasons, on pain of forfeiture, at the first hearing after the report is filed or, if objections were raised, immediately after the response to them (Article 338 of the Civil Procedure Code). Anyone who “thinks it over” for one hearing has lost the evidence.
Few taxpayers know that they are not condemned to wait passively for the report of the court-appointed expert. Under Article 330(5) of the Civil Procedure Code, experts chosen by the parties and approved by the court may take part in the expert report as the party's consultants: they can supply information, put questions and comments, and draw up a separate report. It is one of the most powerful levers in evidence in tax litigation.
The consultant attends the work and knows the file from the inside; he can correct a wrong premise before it makes it into the report, far more effective than later objections.
The consultant's specialisation must be the same as the appointed expert's or, if that is not possible, a related one in the same field.
The cost of the consultant's participation is included, on a win, in the litigation costs recoverable from ANAF (Article 451(3) of the Civil Procedure Code).
In practice, the expert-consultant turns the expert report from a “lottery” into a controlled process: someone on your side is in the room, watching the method and the documents.
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.
Whether the tax authority's figures hold up arithmetically, and whether the result matches the findings in the inspection report.
Whether the method chosen (direct, indirect, estimate) was applicable and whether it was applied correctly, without selectively picking the data that increases the base.
The invoices, contracts and statements that the taxpayer submitted and that the tax authority did not take into account.
Not the legal interpretation, but the technical classification: the correct rate, the moment the tax becomes due, the treatment of an exempt transaction.
A widespread confusion is that, before ANAF, the taxpayer must prove everything. The reality is more nuanced: under Article 73 of the Tax Procedure Code, the taxpayer bears the burden of proving the acts and facts underlying his returns, but the tax authority bears the burden of giving reasons for the administrative act. Supporting documents and accounting records constitute evidence (Article 72).
There is, however, a limit that an honest expert knows. On VAT, the Court of Justice of the European Union held, in Case C-664/16 Vădan, that the right of deduction cannot be granted solely on the basis of an estimate from an expert report, in the absence of invoices or other objective documents. An expert report does not “manufacture” a right out of nothing; it demonstrates, from the documents that exist, that a right was well founded. That is why what you document at the administrative stage matters enormously for what the expert can prove in court.
When the court-appointed expert's report contains an error, the remedy is not indignation, but a technical objection. Under Article 337 of the Civil Procedure Code, objections are raised at the first hearing after the report is filed: the court can ask the expert to clarify, complete the report or resolve contradictions. A useful objection does not dispute the conclusion, but points to the wrong premise: the ignored document, the erroneous arithmetic, the objective left unanswered. And if the premise is irremediably flawed, a new expert report is requested (Article 338), strictly observing the time limit on pain of forfeiture.
A tax dispute is fought simultaneously on two fronts, and the roles must be divided clearly. They do not compete; they complement each other.
The formal and competence defects of the act: insufficient reasoning, breach of the right to be heard, limitation, lack of competence of the authority. These are the grounds of nullity of the fiscal administrative act, and they need no figures at all.
The figures: the wrong method, the inflated base, the ignored documents. If the formal defects do not succeed, the expert report's figures become the last, and most solid, line of defence.
The authority reconstructs the income through an indirect method applied selectively, it takes the inflows, it ignores part of the expenses. The expert report shows that the method, applied consistently, leads to a substantially lower base. The court annuls the adjustment for the part left unproven.
The taxpayer held the invoices, but the deduction had been refused on a formal ground. The expert report demonstrates, from the documents that exist, that the substantive conditions were met. The expert report does not create the right, it already existed, it makes it visible to the court.
In a check of personal tax status, the authority finds unjustified income through a cash-flow method applied incompletely. The expert report reconstructs the flows in full, factors in the sums with a proven source, and shows that the difference is far smaller.
An expert report does not serve only to decide the merits. Suspension of enforcement of a fiscal act can be obtained if the claimant proves a well-justified case and an imminent loss (Legea nr. 554/2004). A “well-justified case” means a serious doubt about the lawfulness of the act, exactly what an extrajudicial expert report showing that the tax authority's calculation method is plainly questionable can prove at this early stage.
A technical report filed in support of the application turns a statement (“the sum is wrong”) into a documented doubt that the court can accept. Suspension usually also requires payment of security calculated on the disputed value; the expert report does not replace it, but it raises the chance that the court will find the well-justified case established. When an inspection ends with a huge sum to pay, the options of suspension and a payment schedule are prepared from day one.
Because the court expert works with what exists in the file, what you file now decides what can be proved later.
Invoices, contracts, statements, correspondence, from the inspection and the administrative appeal onward. What is not in the file risks not being usable by the expert.
The registry stamp, the acknowledgement of receipt. A document that was ignored, but demonstrably filed, is a ready-made expert-report objective.
Draft your comments on the draft inspection report with technical arguments, not just legal ones; they prepare the ground for the expert report.
It is not mandatory by law, but in disputes where the stakes are a figure, it is, in practice, the decisive evidence. The court does not redo a complex tax calculation on its own; in an adjustment, VAT or estimate case, the absence of an expert report leaves the tax authority's figure technically unchallenged.
The court-appointed expert is independent and draws up the official report. The expert-consultant is chosen by you, approved by the court (Article 330(5) of the Civil Procedure Code) and takes part in the expert report defending your interests: he asks questions, raises comments and can draw up a separate report. The first produces the evidence; the second makes sure the evidence does not start from a wrong premise.
Yes, but only for solid grounds and within a strict time limit: the request must be made with reasons, on pain of forfeiture, at the first hearing after the report is filed or immediately after the response to objections (Article 338 of the Civil Procedure Code). An unfavourable report is not countered by disagreement, but by precisely pointing to the error of method or calculation.
The expert deals with lack of merit: the method, the base, the calculation. The lawyer deals with unlawfulness: the formal defects, competence, limitation, the reasoning. In a well-run file, the two are prepared together and support each other.
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.