WHAT IS A CLAIM?
A claim is the property right of one of the parties to a legal relationship of obligation, called the creditor, to require the other party, called the debtor, to fulfill its obligation.
The concept of a claim can thus be viewed from two perspectives: from the perspective of the person who claims it, called the creditor, and from the perspective of the person who owes it, called the debtor.
TYPES OF CLAIMS
Depending on the legal relationships from which they arise and the nature of the parties involved, claims are classified into several categories as follows:
- Commercial claims;
- Civil claims;
- Bank claims;
- Tax claims;
- Wage claims.
Commercial claim – is a classic type of claim arising from commercial contracts concluded between commercial companies or between commercial companies and other contracting parties.
Civil claims – arise from legal relationships where both creditor and debtor are natural persons. Civil claims may include loans between individuals, rents, the value of property sold or purchased, amounts due from inheritance, etc.
Bank claim – is a type of claim arising, in principle, from credit agreements concluded between banking institutions and natural or legal persons. A bank claim thus involves the banking institution granting a loan and the natural/legal person who is the borrower.
Tax claim – This type of claim is also known as a property claim, which arises from the substantive tax law relationship of the state. Tax claims are financial rights arising from obligations that citizens owe to the state budget and are categorized into principal tax claims and accessory tax claims.
Principal tax claims arise from the obligation to pay taxes, duties, social security contributions and fines, while accessory tax claims arise from late payment penalties and interest charged for late payment of principal tax obligations.
Wage claims – Pursuant to the provisions of Article 5 item 18 of Law no. 85/2014 on insolvency prevention and insolvency proceedings wage claims are claims arising from employment and similar relationships between the debtor and its employees.
Thus, salary claims are the salary and other entitlements that an employee must receive from an employer, provided for by the individual employment contract or collective bargaining agreements.
WHAT ARE RECEIVABLES IN ACCOUNTING?
In accounting, receivables are part of current assets and are recorded in the accounting balance sheets, thus, they affect the economic situation of a business over a certain period of time.
As a rule, in accounts receivables accounting, economic transactions connected with the delivery of products, goods, performance of services are recorded in the accounts on the basis of supporting commercial and settlement documents.
Likewise, the receivables of an enterprise are reflected in the accounts at their nominal value, while receivables in foreign currency are recorded and reflected in national currency at the exchange rate valid on the date of their occurrence.
In order for a claim to be recoverable, it must fulfill a series of conditions set out in art. 663 of the Civil Procedure Code, namely that it must be: certain, liquid and due.
Thus, according to that article, the claim is certain when its existence is beyond doubt as evidenced by the enforceable title itself.
The claim is liquid when the subject-matter of the claim is determined or when the instrument permitting enforcement contains the elements necessary to establish it.
As regards the third condition, that of the debt being due and payable, this is fulfilled when the debtor’s obligation has fallen due or when he has been deprived of the benefit of the time limit for payment.
DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CLAIMS AND DEBTS
In principle, a claim is a right of the creditor to require the debtor to give, do or refrain from doing something. Strictly speaking, the concept of a claim refers to the creditor’s right over sums to be collected from customers or debtors.
Correlatively, a debt is the duty of a person to give, do or refrain from doing something that another person has the power or opportunity to require.
Thus, on the one hand, claims are the active part of the obligatory relationship, i.e. the right that a person has to demand payment of a sum of money, the handing over of a specific individual item of property, the performance of a specific service or the refraining from a specific action.
Debts, on the other hand, are the passive part of the legal relationship, correlative to its active part, i.e. the claim.
Debt can be of two types: current and non-current. In turn, they can be long-term debts (due in more than one year) and short-term debts (due in less than one year).
Current liabilities are those obligations that should be paid during the normal operations of the company or that should be paid within twelve months of the balance sheet date.
Thus, short-term liabilities that will be paid within the next twelve months are included in current liabilities.
Receivables are also classified into current and non-current receivables. Thus, a receivable is a current asset if it is expected to be settled in the normal course of the operating cycle of a financial reporting entity, i.e. to be realized within 12 months after the balance sheet date.
LIMITATION PERIOD FOR CLAIMS IN ROMANIA
In accordance with the provisions of art. 2.501 para. (1) of the Civil Code: “Rights of action having a pecuniary object are subject to extinctive prescription, unless otherwise provided by law”. Similarly, according to Article 2.517 of the Civil Code: “The limitation period is three years, unless the law provides otherwise.”
Thus, in principle, the right to request the recovery of certain claims is time-barred within the general limitation period of 3 years. However, the limitation periods may be other, where the law expressly provides otherwise.
However, in the case of tax claims, according to Art. 110 para. (1) and (2) of the Tax Procedure Code, the right of the tax authority to establish tax claims is time-barred after 5 years, unless otherwise provided by law.
As a rule, the limitation period for the right to establish tax claims starts to run from July 1 of the year following the year for which the tax liability is due.
As follows from paragraph. (3) of the aforementioned Article, in the case of tax claims arising from the commission of an act provided for by criminal law, the right to establish tax claims shall lapse after 10 years.
In such a case, the limitation period runs from the date of the commission of the act constituting the offense punishable as such by a final judgment.
Article 111 of the Fiscal Procedure Code regulates the cases of interruption and suspension of the limitation period of the right to establish tax claims. Thus, the limitation periods for tax claims are interrupted in the following cases
- in the cases and under the conditions established by law for the interruption of the limitation period for the right of action;
- on the date of submission by the taxpayer/payer of the tax return after the expiry of the legal deadline for its submission
- on the date on which the taxpayer/payer corrects the tax return or performs another voluntary act of acknowledgment of the tax debt due.
At the same time, the limitation periods provided for in Article 110 of the Fiscal Procedure Code shall be suspended:
- in the cases and under the conditions established by law for the suspension of the limitation period of the right to bring an action;
- during the period between the date of commencement of the tax inspection/assessment of the personal tax situation and the date of issuance of the tax assessment decision as a result of the tax inspection/assessment of the personal tax situation, provided that the legal time limit for carrying out the tax inspection/assessment is complied with;
- during the time the taxpayer/payer evades the tax inspection/assessment of personal tax situation;
- during the period between the date of declaration of an inactive taxpayer/payer and the date of reactivation;
- for the period between the date of the communication to the criminal prosecution authorities of the report of the criminal prosecution authorities or the report drawn up following the request of the criminal prosecution authorities to the tax authorities to make findings of facts constituting violations of the provisions and obligations whose compliance they control and the date of the final decision on the criminal case;
- for the period between the date of death of the individual on whom a tax inspection/audit of the personal tax situation was in progress and the date of becoming aware by the inspection/audit body that there are or are not successors, as the case may be.
As a result of the expiry of the limitation period for the right to establish the tax claim, the tax authority shall terminate the procedure for issuing the tax debt.
