A fire in the archive. A stolen laptop. An accountant who has disappeared along with the documents. Then comes an inspection, and the taxpayer has nothing to put on the table. From this point there are two paths. One, correct: lawful reconstitution, based on the traces each document left elsewhere. The other, tempting and dangerous: “redoing” the missing documents, that is, fabricating them retroactively. The first saves the case; the second turns it into a new criminal offence.
The reconstitution of financial and accounting documents that have been lost, stolen or destroyed is governed by Ordinul ministrului finantelor publice nr. 2634/2015, still in force in 2026. The order sets out a strict procedure, with short deadlines, that the taxpayer must follow as soon as the loss is noticed.
The person who discovers the loss, theft or destruction of documents must notify the head of the entity in writing within 24 hours of the discovery.
Within 3 working days of the notification, a report (proces-verbal) is drawn up identifying the missing documents, the person responsible and the circumstances of the loss.
The procedure must be completed within 30 days of the discovery, or, in the case of force majeure, within 90 days of it ending.
Reconstituted documents carry the note “RECONSTITUTED” and are kept in a separate reconstitution file. If the original is later found, the reconstituted document is cancelled on the basis of a report. Following these steps is not a formality: it gives the reconstituted records legitimacy before the tax authority.
An accounting document rarely exists in a single copy: it has a counterpart held by the other party to the transaction, a trace at the bank, an entry in a register. The more external traces a transaction has left, the stronger the reconstitution.
On the basis of copies held by business partners, suppliers and customers.
On the basis of bank statements and banking documents.
On the basis of copies held by the parties, the notary or public registers.
On the basis of electronic records, backup copies and tax returns already filed.
Tax digitalisation has radically changed the reconstitution landscape. Much of the data that used to be lost along with the archive now sits outside it, and is often already with ANAF.
Invoices issued and received through the national system pass through the ANAF platform; they can be reconstituted from the system regardless of what happened to the paper copies.
The standard audit file, submitted periodically, contains a large part of the accounting data, journals, accounts, transactions, in a structured format. What you have already reported remains recoverable.
Banks keep a history of transactions and issue it on request; they support reconstituting the real flow of money, independently of internal documents.
For the taxpayer acting in good faith, losing the archive no longer means losing the information. For anyone tempted to “redo” the past, it is a trap: any document fabricated today has to be consistent with the data ANAF already holds, and most of the time it is not.
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 party-appointed expert cannot and must not produce documents for transactions that did not take place, or in forms that did not exist at the time. That is no longer reconstitution, it is fabrication, and fabricating documents that appear authentic gives rise to criminal liability for forgery of documents (falsul in inscrisuri). The difference does not depend on subjective intent, but on the objective nature of the act: recovering a genuine copy of a genuine invoice is lawful; drafting an invoice today “dated” two years back, for a transaction that never took place, is forgery.
The most serious risk of a poorly conducted defence is exactly this: a tax problem, one that could have been resolved with an estimate and a discussion about the tax base, turns into a criminal case for forgery, a new offence, sometimes more serious than the original one.
Note, reconstitution does not mean “redoing”. Reconstituting a missing invoice for a real transaction, on the basis of the partner's copy, is lawful. Drafting a new invoice for a transaction that never took place, or backdating a document, is forgery of documents, a separate offence that adds to, and aggravates, any tax case.
The pressure of an imminent inspection pushes many taxpayers towards exactly this move. The party-appointed expert's rule has no exceptions: only what actually existed is reconstructed, and only from verifiable external sources. Anything else is not a defence, it is a second offence.
It starts from a transaction that actually took place; it relies on a verifiable external source (business partner, bank, register, ANAF system); the document carries the appropriate note and goes into the reconstitution file; the procedure under OMFP 2634/2015 has been followed.
The transaction never took place, or has been altered to change the tax outcome; the “source” is also created by the taxpayer, mirroring the document it is meant to support; the real date is falsified (backdating); the aim is not to recover information, but to construct a convenient version of reality.
A serious expert flatly refuses the second scenario, not only because it is unlawful, but also because it is ineffective: in the age of e-Factura and SAF-T, a documentary lie contradicts itself.
The absence of documents does not block an inspection, quite the opposite. When records do not exist, are incomplete or are not made available, the tax authority has the right, under Article 106 of the Tax Procedure Code, to determine the tax base by estimation. The estimate uses whatever data is available and is, by its nature, unfavourable to the taxpayer. The burden of proof remains, under Article 73, on the taxpayer for the facts underlying their returns.
This is where lawful reconstitution becomes crucial: every document recovered from external sources narrows the ground left for estimation and replaces an assumption with evidence. The same reconstruction also supports calculating the loss on the basis of reconstituted records in any criminal case, or reconstituting sources in a personal tax situation review. The party-appointed expert does not oppose the estimate with a denial, but with a reconstruction of the facts.
The taxpayer is not the only holder of evidence. Under Article 64 of the Tax Procedure Code, in order to establish the tax facts, the authority is entitled to request documents not only from the taxpayer, but also from other persons with whom the taxpayer has, or has had, economic or legal relations, the logic behind the question of what documents ANAF can request and the duty to produce them.
The same logic works in favour of the defence too: the sources the authority can turn to in order to build the case, suppliers, customers, banks, notaries, can be used by the expert to reconstitute the records in the taxpayer's favour. A document held by an independent third party also carries greater evidential weight: it cannot be suspected of having been fabricated by the interested party.
If the procedure under OMFP 2634/2015 has been followed and every item has an identifiable external source, reconstituted documents carry the same weight as the originals they replace. What gives them weight is not their form, but their traceability, the ability to show, for each document, where it comes from and how it can be verified with a third party.
Conversely, “reconstituted” records with no source, which appear out of nowhere in exactly the form the taxpayer needs, are weak as evidence and criminally suspect. The expert's role is to produce the first type of record and to keep well away from the second.
These are proven with documents from the fire brigade, the police or the insurer, which also opens up the extended 90-day time limit for force majeure.
This is proven with the criminal complaint and the case file. The official document establishes the involuntary nature of the loss.
The most delicate case: the taxpayer remains tax liable for their own records, even where the practical fault lies with the service provider.
In all three situations, the typical mistake is passivity, waiting for the inspection without having started the reconstitution. Whoever gave notice in time and began recovering documents turns up at the inspection with a file; whoever did nothing turns up with a problem.
Checks that the reconstitution procedure has been followed and puts it right if it was neglected.
Takes stock of the period's transactions and, for each one, identifies the external source; recovers documents from business partners, banks, notaries, registers and ANAF's systems (e-Factura, SAF-T).
Documents the provenance of each item, then reconstructs the economic flow and the real tax outcome, which it compares with the authority's estimate.
What it never does is fill gaps with invented documents. An honest gap, flagged as such, is stronger in the defence than a fabricated item that can collapse at the first cross-check.
Reconstituting the records is never just a technical exercise. That is why the party-appointed expert works together with the lawyer: the expert determines what can be reconstituted and from which sources; the lawyer assesses the risk that the reconstitution, the procedure followed, or even the disappearance of the documents, might be read in criminal terms. Together they decide what is submitted, in what order and with what explanation, part of coordinating the tax defence with the criminal one.
This coordination prevents exactly the fatal mistake, the one where a taxpayer acting in good faith, trying to “fix” their own books alone, produces the evidence for their own prosecution. In a case with criminal stakes, whoever reconstructs the records needs to know both tax law and criminal law.
With the procedure, not with reconstruction. Give written notice within 24 hours, then draw up the report within 3 working days and start the reconstitution, which must be completed within 30 days (or 90 days from the end of the force majeure). Obtain the document from the fire brigade or the insurer, it proves the accidental nature of the loss. Only then start recovering documents from external sources.
Yes, but by recovering the genuine copies from business partners, banks or e-Factura, not by drafting new ones. A genuine copy of a real invoice, obtained from the other party to the transaction, is lawful reconstitution. An invoice drafted now and backdated is forgery, even if the transaction actually took place. The distinction is between recovering and fabricating.
Yes. The data in e-Factura and SAF-T is a valuable aid, but reconstituting the records remains your obligation, and the procedure under OMFP 2634/2015 must be followed. The advantage is that a significant part of the information is already verifiable at source, which makes the reconstitution faster and more solid.
It narrows it. The more you reconstitute from verifiable sources, the less ground is left for the estimate, and presumed figures are replaced with proven ones. Records reconstituted fully and correctly can remove the estimate altogether; a partial reconstitution reduces it. In either case, silence and passivity are the most expensive options.
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.