A lot of entrepreneurs and business representatives find the Romanian legislation to be critical in relation to social involvement, no matter the emerging field. Even the few fiscal mechanisms that exist are not promoted enough and therefore end up not being properly used or understood.

Directing up to 20% of the income tax to an NGO is one of those mechanisms. HOSPICE Casa Speranței, an organization that, for the last 22 years, takes care of patients suffering from an incurable illness, initiated this year a national awareness campaign. The campaign’s message tries to reach out to the soul of each of us, by stepping into someone’s shoes, who is facing such a diagnosis. The fiscal mechanism offers the opportunity to change something in the life of those people who are in the meanwhile someone’s grandparents, parents, siblings or children.

Companies’ representatives are invited to “take” a part of the taxes they have to pay to the state and “invest” those money in the HOSPICE cause. The idea is to make a difference, and forget about the dissatisfaction produced by the inefficiency of budgetary assignments which makes it impossible for the tax payer to find the funds invested where he would have wished.

While launching the campaign, HOSPICE made an estimate together with EY Romania and “Al Treilea Sector”, which shows how efficient the business environment impact could be for the NGOs, if all the Romanian companies will assign up to 20% of their tax income, limited by a turnover of 0.3%. Each year, over 500 million euro could sustain the changes that we all wish around us, by contributing to humanitarian, social or environmental causes.