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The Taxpayers' Advocate handled 298 complaints in 2025, dominated by those regarding DIVA

2026-03-31 13:20:00, Ekonomi CNA

The Taxpayers' Advocate handled 298 complaints in 2025, dominated by those

The Individual Income Tax Declaration has been the cause of a multitude of complaints in 2025 to the Taxpayers' Advocate. The annual report of this office shows that a total of 298 complaints (electronic and official) were handled.

"After assessing the subject of the complaint and reviewing their content, 136 cases were received and treated in writing, for which the review continued to resolve the issues raised by the taxpayers. At the end of the issues addressed, in cooperation with the tax administration, a total of 48 cases were resolved, and 88 cases were rejected due to lack of competence or failure to meet preliminary criteria. Also, 134 cases were treated electronically (due to the high number of complaints related to DIVA during the first quarter of 2025)," the report states.

Specifically for DIVA, the report estimates that from the complaints handled, it was found that there are over 40 thousand individual taxpayers who have not declared their DIVA tax liability for 2024 due to lack of knowledge about declaring this liability. This category of declarants is more "vulnerable" compared to other natural or legal entities in terms of knowledge, understanding and implementation of tax legislation.

It is also noted that cases of human errors arising during the verification of the obligation to declare or not or the completion of the form for the period have not yet been resolved. "Specifically, these human errors have been detected in cases where the individual has logged into the personal account in the system and:

He clicked on a year different from the year he is required to declare, for which he received an automatic penalty from the system for failure to declare on time.

He clicked on a specific year to verify whether he was subject to the DIVA declaration, even though he was not subject to the DIVA, the system automatically penalized the individual for not declaring the DIVA.

So, despite such errors, the system has automatically generated penalties which, in our view, are unfair and disproportionate, since: "The tax procedural law provides for administrative sanctions for cases of misdeclaration, declaration outside the deadline provided for in the law, or inaccurate declaration of the obligation," the report assesses.

According to the document, the cases found are not provided for in the law as violations with penal consequences, but come as a result of an unintentional error because the system format itself is not built in such a way that:

– first notify the taxpayer of the consequence, and

– secondly, to avoid generating unnecessary automatic penalties for such cases.

Another finding is the implementation of coercive measures to collect unpaid tax liabilities against employed individuals, subject to DIVA.

"From the complaints filed by individual taxpayers subject to DIVA tax liability, but also from the meetings held with DMDTP, it has resulted that, during the execution of the tax liability measure as a result of non-payment by the taxpayer, in implementation of the Order for the Blocking of Bank Accounts, the banks have withheld the full amount of the tax liability, an amount which has coincided with the taxpayer's full salary. Referring to the procedural rules provided for in Article 533 of the Code of Civil Procedure, even for cases of execution of court decisions in money through enforcement remuneration, the obligation of the executing body to execute the debtor's salary without affecting the minimum living standard of the individual/his/her family is determined," the report states./ Monitor Magazine