A recent legislative proposal has been confirmed and adopted in the Romanian parliamentary procedure, bringing potential for less administrative burden to fiscal subjects. The envisaged legislative solutions created the elimination of the obligation of users of electronic fiscal cash registers to issue, ex officio, a fiscal receipt for receipts made by using credit/debit cards. Details are below.

The deputies adopted an amendment (that was initially rejected and then put into debate once again) that modifies article 319 (regarding invoicing), paragraph (10), letter a) of Law no. 227/2015 on the Fiscal Code, according to which the taxable person is exempt from the obligation to issue an invoice for several operations, except in the case where the beneficiary requests the invoice, including deliveries of goods through retail stores and services to the population, for which the issuance of fiscal receipts is mandatory.

The referred amendment to the law states that:

1. In Article 1, after paragraph (2), a new paragraph is inserted, paragraph (21), with the following content: “By way of exception to the provisions of paragraph (2), for receipts made by using credit/debit cards, users are not obliged to print/hand over fiscal receipts with electronic fiscal cash registers to customers. At the request of customers, users may print and hand over the fiscal receipt to them. The lack of a printed fiscal receipt does not affect the rights of consumers provided for by Ordinance no. 21/1992 on consumer protection, republished, with subsequent amendments and completions, the bank account statement taking the place of the fiscal receipt as proof of the purchase.”

The purpose of this latest amendment is to simplify commercial operations related to transactions carried out by credit or debit cards. For collections made using credit or debit cards, users are not required to print and hand over fiscal receipts with electronic fiscal cash registers to customers. At the request of customers, users can still print and hand over the fiscal receipt to them, and also, it is not forbidden to continue to print out and provide receipts in the future, since this change is just a new possibility. The lack of a printed fiscal receipt will not affect the rights of consumers provided for by regulations on consumer protection, since the bank account statement is taking the place of the fiscal receipt as proof of the purchase in such cases.

One of the initiators of the project stated that obligators of fiscalization have the option and freedom to continue printing the fiscal receipt for all payment methods even if the printed version is not requested by the customer, thus are without the obligation to change their cash register settings in any way. The measure is optional, and the economic operator is not obliged in any way to change anything at the cash register. In case the user of the cash register wants to stop printing tax, i.e., fiscal receipts, when the customer does not request it and is paying via credit/debit cards, such change can be made but is completely optional. Therefore, receipts can still be printed for each customer for all payment methods used in Romania, just like it was defined previously.

The President signed the legal text of the amendment by which amending the obligation of economic operators to issue printed fiscal receipts for credit or debit card-paid transactions. This means that sellers who are obligated to use electronic fiscal cash registers will be required to print receipts and give them to customers, in case of card payments, only at the express request of customers. The law amendment (Legea nr. 317/2024) was published in the Official Gazette, and it will enter into force on December 26, 2024.