An entrepreneur walked into the courtroom with a favourable accounting expert report: the books were kept correctly, the balances closed, everything was recorded properly. He lost anyway. Not because the expert had got anything wrong, but because the expert had answered the wrong question. The dispute was not about how the expenses had been recorded, but about whether they were deductible for tax purposes.
The confusion starts from one shared word, “expert report”, placed in front of two distinct intellectual operations. One checks the books. The other applies tax law. They can overlap, but they are not interchangeable.
It checks how transactions are reflected in the books: the correctness of the entries, compliance with accounting regulations, the accuracy of the balances, the reality of the supporting documents. It answers the question: are the transactions correctly recorded? This is the activity of accounting experts (O.G. nr. 65/1994, CECCAR) and it can have a tax component.
It applies tax legislation, the Tax Code, the Tax Procedure Code, the double taxation treaties, to the facts. It answers a different question: what is the correct tax treatment; is the expense deductible; is VAT due; is the base correctly established? This is the activity of tax advisers (O.G. nr. 71/2001, CCF).
In blunt summary: the accounting expert report says what the books show; the tax expert report says what you owe the state. These are planes that touch, but do not coincide.
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.
A transaction can be impeccable from an accounting standpoint and still generate a tax liability, or the other way round. Deductibility, the chargeability of VAT and recharacterisation are matters of tax treatment, not of the correctness of the entry.
The invoice is real, the account is the right one, the entry is in the correct period. But if the expense was not incurred for the purposes of the economic activity, or falls under a deductibility limitation, it is not deducted when calculating corporate income tax. The correctness of the entry does not produce deductibility.
In accounting terms, the invoice is correctly recorded. For tax purposes, if the transaction lacks economic substance, the right to deduct is refused, regardless of how accurate the entry is. The answer turns on the reality of the transaction and the conditions for deduction, not on the correct closing of an account.
A management contract between affiliated companies, recorded as a supply of services, can be recharacterised for tax purposes, a disguised distribution of profit or an expense without substance, with effects on corporate income tax, VAT and dividends. Only a tax analysis discusses whether the recharacterisation holds up.
In all these situations, a “clean” accounting expert report can be perfectly correct and, at the same time, completely irrelevant to what is at stake in the case. The judge does not need to learn that the entry is correct; the judge needs to learn what the correct tax treatment is, the very ground on which evidence in tax litigation is built.
The difference between the two pieces of work shows most clearly in how the objectives are framed, the questions the expert must answer. The same transaction generates radically different objectives, depending on which level is targeted.
“Establish whether the transactions were recorded in accordance with accounting regulations”; “Check the correlation between the balances and the supporting documents”; “Determine whether the books faithfully reflect the transactions carried out”.
“Establish whether the rejected expenses were deductible for the purposes of calculating corporate income tax”; “Determine whether the VAT base was correctly established”; “Recalculate the tax liability starting from the facts and the applicable provisions of the Tax Code”.
An accounting objective receives an accounting answer; a tax objective, a tax answer. If what is at stake in the case is the tax owed, and the objectives speak only of recording, the report, however rigorous, will miss the decisive question. Hence the key role of the party-appointed expert at the stage of framing the objectives, before the expert report is approved by the court.
It is carried out by accounting experts registered with CECCAR, including in the form of an accounting expert report with a tax component.
It is carried out only by tax advisers who hold the status of forensic tax expert, registered with the Ministry of Justice, Related Legal Professions Department.
Between the two there is a grey area, which the Chamber of Tax Advisers has explained as follows: a tax expert report (with objectives that do not involve accounting regulations) is carried out by the tax adviser; an accounting expert report with a tax component, by the accounting expert; and when the tax component is predominant by the purpose and objectives of the work, but there is also a secondary accounting component, the expert report is carried out by judicial experts who also hold the status of tax adviser. In mirror image, CECCAR's position is that the accounting expert may carry out judicial expert reports in all specialisations within the field of accounting.
For you, as a party in a case, the dispute over competences matters less than a practical rule: the specialist's classification must be fixed by the real nature of the question, not by the label you reach for out of habit. When the subject matter of the dispute is the establishment of tax liabilities, the case for a tax expert report follows directly from the subject matter of the claim.
Nowhere is the distinction more costly than in criminal proceedings. The loss in a tax evasion case is not a simple accounting addition; it is the amount of the tax liability evaded, a figure determined by applying tax law, that is, by tax reasoning, not merely accounting reasoning.
Legea nr. 126/2024 introduced, in Article 10(2) of Legea nr. 241/2005, the rule that the loss is determined on the basis of a specialist expert report, with the right of the suspect or the defendant to take part in carrying it out (with reference to Articles 172 to 180 of the Code of Criminal Procedure). By Decision no. 430/2025 (the Panel for the Resolution of Points of Law in Criminal Matters, published in the Official Gazette no. 149 of 26 February 2026), the High Court of Cassation and Justice (ÎCCJ) held that the failure to draw up the specialist expert report renders the indictment irregular, with the consequence that the case is returned to the prosecutor. A findings report from the anti-fraud inspector does not take its place.
The phrase “specialist expert report” feeds exactly the debate in this article: accounting or tax? When what is at stake is the amount of the tax liability evaded, the tax component is typically decisive, rejected deductibility, recharacterised VAT, reclassified income are matters of tax law. For the defence, the practical consequence is direct: at the preliminary chamber stage, what is checked is not only whether an expert report exists, but whether the expert report reaches the tax component that determines the amount, a check that the lawyer and the party-appointed expert in the criminal file carry out together, on first reading the file. We deal with the concrete lines of defence in the analysis on the defence in a tax evasion case, and with establishing the loss at the investigation stage in the one on the criminal investigation in tax evasion.
NOTE: The “specialist expert report” required by Article 10 of Legea nr. 241/2005 is not satisfied by just any report. If the work chosen does not reach the decisive tax component of the loss, and stops at checking the entries without arriving at the correct tax treatment, you risk an expert report that exists on paper but does not answer the question that matters for the amount.
As at 18 July 2026, Article 10 of Legea nr. 241/2005, in the form given by Legea nr. 126/2024, remains in force, and the requirement for a specialist expert report is maintained; the matter is, however, under debate, following a call in March 2026 by some specialised prosecutors for this requirement to be removed, so the exact wording is worth checking at the date of each step taken.
The contrast with other property offences is instructive. In embezzlement (delapidare), for instance, the loss is predominantly a matter of assets and accounting, amounts misappropriated from the company's assets, where the accounting expert report is typically the right tool. The nature of the offence dictates the nature of the expert report.
The mistake we see most often is the reflex of asking for “an accounting expert report” for any problem involving figures, including when the decisive question is one of tax law. The result is a report that is correct and expensive, but irrelevant. Choosing correctly goes through three steps.
Is the question about how a transaction was recorded (accounting), or about what tax is owed / whether the base is correct (tax)?
An expert report answers exactly what it was asked; objectives that target only the recording will produce conclusions about the recording, not about the tax treatment.
An accounting expert, a tax adviser, or someone holding both qualifications, depending on whether the decisive component is accounting, tax, or mixed.
In practice, heavy cases have both layers. First you check that the books are correct (the accounting layer); then you apply tax law to a clean base (the tax layer). In a case involving transfer pricing, VAT in chains of supply, or recharacterisations, the two are intertwined: you cannot discuss the tax treatment without first establishing what the books show, but correct books say nothing about the tax owed.
One example: a company with intra-group transactions receives a transfer pricing adjustment. The accounting layer checks whether the transactions were recorded and documented correctly. The tax layer checks something else: whether the method used to set the market price is the right one, whether the sample of comparables is adequate, and whether the adjustment complies with the arm's length principle. A report that stops at the first layer confirms that everything is “correctly recorded” and misses exactly the dispute, which is a tax one.
The solution is not to choose between expert reports, but to structure the objectives across the two layers and to make sure the specialist, or the team, covers both. A competent party-appointed tax expert knows how to draw this line and to ask for exactly the type of work the figure depends on.
The accounting expert can carry out an accounting expert report with a tax component. The “pure” forensic tax expert report, with objectives concerned with applying tax legislation rather than accounting regulations, is reserved to tax advisers who hold the status of forensic tax expert. The grey area, where the tax component is predominant, is resolved according to the concrete subject matter of the work, and the position of the Chamber of Tax Advisers requires, in those situations, also holding the status of tax adviser.
The law speaks of a “specialist expert report” for establishing the loss. Its nature, accounting or tax, is fixed according to the concrete subject matter, but the loss in a tax evasion case, being the amount of the tax liability evaded, typically has a decisive tax component. The absence of the expert report leads to the case being returned to the prosecutor.
Yes, when the case has both layers. What matters is how the objectives are framed: each expert report must be given the questions it is, by its nature, fit to answer, the recording, for the accounting one; the tax treatment and the tax base, for the tax one.
Because the report answers strictly the objectives set. Poorly framed objectives produce a piece of work that is technically correct but useless for what is at stake in the case. This is where the party-appointed expert comes in, alongside the lawyer: at the stage of framing the objectives, not after the report has been filed.
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.