The stingy and greedy state and the confiscated labor

The state takes its share from every salary before a person even gets to see it. And yet, state hospitals ask for bandages from home, state schools ask parents for funds, while the state’s roads ask drivers for new shock absorbers. We have a state that preys on those who work and is miserly when it comes to honoring its social contract.

The problem is not only how much you pay the state, but especially what you get for the money you pay. The Belgian and the Austrian pay a lot, but receive functional public services, modern infrastructure, and a social safety net that actually catches people. The Romanian pays, and in return receives promises—often lies at that. This is also where the heart of the paradox lies. The Romanian state is not poor because it takes too little from those who work. It is poor because it has given up taking from where it should. The most eloquent example is VAT: the European Commission estimates the gap between VAT owed and VAT collected at around 30% in 2023, the highest level in the EU, compared with an average of 9.5%. Of every ten lei that should reach the budget, almost three are lost along the way. Tax evasion has become a tolerated national sport, while “gray” or “black” capital and untaxed great fortunes always find a loophole. When the hole in the budget needs to be covered, the bill automatically reaches those who have no way to escape. It is no coincidence that the standard VAT rate rose in August 2025 from 19% to 21%, paid by the same people.

The employee is the tax authority’s “captive client.” They cannot negotiate, cannot postpone, cannot conceal. Their tax is withheld at source, their contributions are deducted before they see the final amount, and they pay on time, every month, down to the last penny. A lazy state finds in this discipline its most convenient source of income: it does not need to be sought, tracked down, or persuaded. Work thus becomes easy prey to capture, rather than a resource that must be encouraged.

The problem is not that the state takes too much from labor overall, but that, from an abnormally narrow tax base, it relies precisely on the two sources it cannot lose: wages withheld at source and VAT paid at the checkout. Labor is not confiscated because it is the wealthiest source, but because it is the most readily available. The miserly state can prey only on those it catches.

What happens next is predictable. Those who can leave. Skilled young people—doctors, engineers, programmers—choose labor markets where effort is respected and fairly rewarded, while Romania loses precisely the people who could have increased its future revenues. Those who remain, many of them, make a rational calculation: if declared work is the most heavily burdened with taxes, part of it moves into the gray area. The tax base narrows, pressure on those left behind increases, and the circle tightens.

The solution cannot be another round of increases blindly imposed on the same good-faith taxpayers. Asking more from those who already give everything means confusing desperation with policy. Romania needs a tax reform built on fairness and economic intelligence: efficient collection, genuine digitalization of ANAF, not a mere showpiece, a broadened tax base, and a firm reduction of tax evasion, especially regarding VAT and capital. It also means an effort with the same determination on the other side of the budget: every leu spent poorly is a leu taken needlessly from someone’s salary.

Because, in the end, a budget is not an accounting abstraction. It is the sum of all the mornings when someone got up and went to work. A state that respects its citizens does not merely ask them to pay; it clearly shows them where the money goes and guarantees that their effort will not disappear into a void.