The anti-fraud inspector can estimate that you have “unjustified wealth”, apply the 70% rate to it, and issue the enforceable claim. The stake is a concrete sum, often very large, built on an estimate. This is where the party-appointed expert comes in: not to dispute the state's right to tax, but to reconstruct the real sources of the money and dismantle, figure by figure, the assumptions the estimate rests on.
Since July 2026, under Ordinul președintelui ANAF nr. 768/2026, the Fiscal Anti-Fraud General Directorate (DGAF) has received the power to check the tax status of individuals and to establish directly, through a tax assessment decision, the liabilities arising from income with no identified source, taxed at 70% of the adjusted base. This is the natural continuation of the Anti-Fraud Directorate's expanded powers from July 2026.
The personal tax status check (verificarea situației fiscale personale, VSFP) is governed by Articles 138 to 147 of the Tax Procedure Code. Unlike an ordinary inspection, it is not limited to one source of income: the authority examines the entire set of the person's property rights and obligations, the cash flows and any relevant element (Article 138). The central tool is the comparison: declared income against expenditure plus the increase in wealth. When the difference is significant, more than 10% of declared income but not less than 50,000 lei, the person is brought into the check.
The duration is substantial: under Article 140, the check can run for up to 270 days, plus the periods allowed for producing documents. Before it starts, the authority sends a notice of inspection (aviz de verificare), and the stage before that is, as a rule, the compliance notice (notificare de conformare), the best moment to intervene.
When declared income does not explain the wealth and expenditure, the authority reconstructs the income through indirect methods. Their framework is set by OPANAF nr. 675/2018, as amended by OPANAF nr. 417/2023. There are three methods, and the authority chooses the one it considers most suitable.
It compares the total funds spent with the total funds available from known sources. The excess is treated as undeclared income. A real source that is left out, a loan, a withdrawal of old savings, artificially inflates the “unjustified income”.
It analyses the movements in accounts and cash; deposits and receipts that do not correlate with declared income or non-taxable sources are presumed to be income. The specific risk: double counting, the same money, moved between one's own accounts, counted more than once.
It measures the increase in net worth between the start and the end of the period, plus estimated living expenses. The sensitive point: recognising the opening balances, the money already held at the start of the period.
All three methods are lawful and, correctly applied, reasonable. Their fragility lies not in the principle, but in the input data: each starts from the assumption that the list of known sources is complete. It almost never is, and it is precisely its gaps that become the “unjustified wealth”.
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.
Loans, inheritances, gifts, savings from earlier years, proceeds from the sale of assets, refunds, winnings already taxed or non-taxable. Each explains part of the wealth presumed unjustified.
Not source by source in isolation, but as a coherent chronology of the money: where it came from, where it sat, how it was spent.
Shows where the estimate counted the same money twice, where it ignored an opening balance, where it treated an internal transfer as income. The result: a documented position that supports the administrative appeal and, later, the court-ordered expert report.
The evidence that carries weight is that which is contemporaneous with the facts and verifiable with third parties. Two themes connect here: the declaration of assets and income, which fixes the “snapshot” of the wealth, and the rules on cash and bank transfers, where the lack of traceability of cash generates the most presumptions of income.
The contract (preferably with a certified date), proof that the sum was handed over (statement, receipt) and, the decisive element, proof that the lender himself had the source of the money.
The certificate of inheritance, the deed of gift, the valuations.
Historical account statements, evidencing the balance accumulated before the period under check, the evidence most often lost.
The contracts and proof that the price was received.
Warning: the 70% tax is applied to presumed income, not proven income. That is why the quality of the justification for the source decides everything. The burden of proving the origin of the funds falls on the taxpayer (Article 73 of the Tax Procedure Code), but this does not exempt the authority from the obligation to give reasons for its estimate and to indicate the method and criteria used; an estimate that is unreasoned or based on double counting is open to challenge.
Also be careful of the criminal dimension: if indications of tax evasion arise during the check, the file can migrate to the prosecutor's office, and statements made hastily before the inspector can be used later. On this plane the presumption of innocence applies; no tax suspicion is equivalent to guilt. Nothing that is filed should be improvised.
The same money, moved between one's own accounts, or withdrawn and redeposited, shows up several times as an inflow and is treated each time as separate income.
The estimate starts from zero, as if the person had had no money at the start of the period. Earlier savings, perfectly legal, become, through the omission, “unjustified income”.
A sum transferred from one of your own accounts to another, or between spouses, is not income; treated as such, it inflates the taxable base.
A real loan, but sparsely documented, is sometimes dismissed entirely, although completing the evidence (the lender's source, the handover) can rehabilitate it.
The best moment: the taxpayer can clarify his own situation before the check is opened. A documented explanation here can close the matter without a tax assessment decision.
After the notice, the expert builds the file of sources and the position statement, which the authority is required to examine before issuing the decision.
After the decision, the administrative appeal (a mandatory prior procedure) is the last filter before court; here the expert's recalculation becomes a formal argument.
In tax litigation, the figure is settled through a court-ordered expert report, in the carrying out of which the party has the right to an expert-consultant to support his position technically.
The practical rule: the earlier the intervention, the cheaper, more credible and more effective the reconstruction of the sources. Delay does not add evidence, it loses it.
Under Article 73 of the Tax Procedure Code, the taxpayer bears the burden of proving the acts and facts underlying his returns, and therefore also the origin of the funds. But the same provision imposes on the authority the burden of giving reasons for fiscal administrative acts on the basis of evidence or its own findings. And when the authority resorts to an estimate, Article 106 requires it to state in the decision the factual grounds, the legal basis and the criteria used.
In other words: the taxpayer justifies the sources, but the estimate must be built transparently, with a method that is stated and applied correctly. The party-appointed expert works on both fronts: he completes the proof of source and demonstrates where the reasoning for the estimate is deficient.
The VSFP is a fiscal procedure, but if indications of tax evasion offences arise, the authority can refer the matter to the prosecutor's office, and the same facts can end up in a criminal file, the point at which the file's migration to the prosecutor's office comes in. The difference in stakes is large: in the fiscal proceeding a tax is at issue, in the criminal one a possible liability, governed by the presumption of innocence.
The expert's role does not change, but it is recalibrated: reconstructing the sources becomes an element of the defence, and coordinating the fiscal defence with the criminal one becomes mandatory. The fiscal and criminal defence must be thought through as one from the start, so that the position taken in the fiscal appeal does not contradict the position in the criminal file, including on calculating the loss at the criminal stage.
This is the most frequent and the most frustrating scenario. The person really did have the sources, saved for years on end, received a loan from his parents, sold a flat, but did not keep the documents, worked heavily in cash and cannot reconstruct the chronology. From ANAF's point of view, an unproven source is a non-existent source.
Here the expert does not “invent” anything: he looks for the evidence wherever it still exists, historical bank statements, notarial archives, third-party records, sale deeds, and relies on reconstructing the records from verifiable sources. The difference between paying 70% and paying nothing lies, in these cases, exclusively in the quality of the reconstruction.
They fix the opening balances, the evidence most often lost.
For any loan between individuals, a contract with a certified date and proof of the handover and of the lender's source.
Inheritances, gifts and sales are documented then, not retroactively.
Avoid building up untraceable cash; a bank trail is the best defence. Match the declaration of assets to reality, with no gaps.
It is the amount by which the wealth and expenditure exceed the income you declared or can justify with non-taxable sources. It is not an accusation of fraud in itself, but an accounting difference: the money exists, but its origin has not been proven. Precisely because it is a presumption, it can be rebutted with documents showing the real source: savings, loans, inheritances, sales.
Under Ordinul ANAF nr. 768/2026, DGAF inspectors can establish directly the fiscal liabilities arising from income with no identified source, removing an intermediate stage. This speeds up the procedure, but it does not remove the safeguards: the notice, the right to be heard, the obligation to give reasons for the estimate and the right to appeal all remain. The 70% tax is applied to the adjusted base, and the base can be challenged.
Yes, if it is proven consistently. The contract alone is not enough: the authority checks whether the lender himself had the money (proof of his source) and whether the sum was actually handed over. That is why a contract with a certified date and the bank trail of the transfer count for more than statements.
The cost-benefit ratio is assessed against the figure at stake and the quality of the existing documentation. Even at moderate sums, an estimate based on double counting or on ignoring the opening balances can be reduced significantly through a correct recalculation. Early intervention, at the compliance notice stage, is usually the most cost-effective.
Informative material, updated on 18 July 2026. It does not constitute legal or tax advice; individual situations must be assessed on their own facts. The personal tax status check is a fiscal procedure; any criminal aspects are separate, and the presumption of innocence applies to every person until a final conviction.
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.