The HCCJ has held that the activity carried out by natural persons on the basis of copyright assignment contracts, consisting of making telephone calls to persons on the list provided by the applicant company in order to collect data indicating the willingness of the persons called to purchase the products marketed by it, did not satisfy the conditions necessary for it to be considered an independent activity within the meaning of the Tax Code.
The applicant company classified the activities consisting of making telephone calls to various persons in order to collect data from which the willingness of the persons called to buy products could be inferred as self-employed activities.
Consequently, the applicant entered the expenditure relating to this activity in the accounts under the heading of expenditure on collaborators, the activity being remunerated on the basis of copyright assignment contracts.
The issue at stake was to identify the nature of the activity in order to determine whether it could be the subject of a copyright assignment contract. On the basis of this determination, it was possible to determine whether the activity performed was of a dependent or independent nature.
The HCCJ held that the work performed could not be protected by copyright on the grounds that no substantial quantitative and qualitative investment had been made in order to obtain the verification or presentation of the contents of a database and that, therefore, the persons performing that work could not be remunerated under a copyright assignment contract.
The activity in question was therefore classified as a dependent activity and, as a result of the reclassification of the nature of the activity, tax liabilities were established for the applicant company in the amount of RON 1,059,253.
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