Fiscal Digitalization- The Antidote of Creative Accounting

Abstract

The current context, national and international, characterized by a broad economic crisis, reveals more than
ever the need for special attention to creative accounting in terms of increasing the role of digitalization in its
maintenance, identification and analysis of manifestations in connection with the informal economy. Creative
accounting is the product of economic realities that are manifested in a maneuvering range between tax optimization
and tax fraud and digitization can amplify, through its resources of creativity and novelty, the negative impact on the
informal economy. The world, everything around, everyday life is becoming more and more digital, the way of
functioning and manifestation of the implicit interpersonal relations and of the economic ones, the economy as a whole,
is changing. Digitization, characterized by rapid transformations to adapt to new technologies, while at first glance
eases the task of tax authorities in combating the negative effects of creative accounting, may as well make this process
difficult by fraudulent use of intent by power information in the digital environment. Beneficially, digitization can
enhance the virtuosity of creative accounting by connecting it to the rapidly evolving markets and payment systems,
but just as well due to the desire for enrichment and business perversity it favors the negative sides of creative
accounting: manipulating accounts, beautifying companies’ image, distorted presentation of performance, choice of
convenient measurement, communication and information methods, etc. Digitization, driven by the Covid crisis, has
reformed the world to unimaginable parameters, the influence on human psychology being very visible, confirming
Naser’s theory that creative accounting is the combination of the complexity of economic reality with psychological
factors specific to human beings. Fiscal digitization, adopted in Romania in 2022, by implementing and generalizing
SPV, introducing electronic invoicing Ro-Invoice, SAF-T reporting, RO e-Transport declaration, directs accounting
creativity to the correct area of real-time tax reporting, significantly reducing the range of its action in the area of fraud
that will allow the authorities to identify and take operational action.