Argumente vechi și noi: este justificată imprescriptibilitatea dreptului de reportare a sumei negative de TVA?
Old and new arguments: Is the lack of a statute of limitations on the right to carry forward a negative VAT balance justified?

Summary/Abstract: Decision no. 6/2026 of the High Court of Cassation and Justice, delivered in April 2026, affirms the non-prescriptible nature of the right of a taxable person to carry forward a negative VAT balance to the VAT returns relating to subsequent tax periods. This paper, however, starts from the opposite premise, namely that this right is subject to a limitation period, and seeks to assess the extent to which the solution adopted by the supreme court is compatible with the normative framework of domestic tax law and with the requirements of EU VAT law. In the absence of the court’s reasoning, the present study focuses on the analysis of the right to carry forward and is structured along two main lines: (i) determining the legal nature of this right, as lying between a mere accounting mechanism, which is legally neutral, and a means of exercising a genuine pecuniary claim of the taxpayer - and (ii) examining the tension between the principles of VAT neutrality and effectiveness, on the one hand, and the principle of legal certainty, on the other hand. The debate as to whether this right is subject to a limitation period or is non-prescriptible goes beyond the purely theoretical level, as it also opens up, at a secondary level, a genuine field of inquiry into the limits of the principles of VAT neutrality and effectiveness in relation to the principle of legal certainty and to the requirements of foreseeability and stability of tax legal relationships.

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