In brief

  • The Constitutional Court dismissed as unfounded the plea seeking to strike the phrase „false, inaccurate or incomplete documents or statements” out of the law. The text stays in force and stays constitutional, and using such documents to obtain European money continues to carry two to seven years of imprisonment and a ban on exercising certain rights.
  • The Court explains what „inaccurate” and „incomplete” mean: adjusting documents so that they meet the eligibility criteria or leaving out the data that would disqualify the applicant, provided the adjustment or the omission is intentional and leads to the funds being obtained. The document does not have to be forged; it is enough that it does not faithfully reflect reality.
  • Watch out for the text reproduced in the decision: it is the form of the article before 12 December 2020, not the one that applies today. The plea was sent to the Court on 16 July 2021, decided on 12 March 2026, that is after 1,700 days, and published 181 days after that.
Act: Decision of the Constitutional Court no. 222 of 12 March 2026 on the plea of unconstitutionality concerning the phrase „false, inaccurate or incomplete documents or statements” in Article 181(1) of Law no. 78/2000 on preventing, detecting and punishing acts of corruption
Published: Official Gazette of Romania (Monitorul Oficial) no. 766 of 9 September 2026
In force from: 9 September 2026, the date of publication

A beneficiary who knowingly keeps a piece of information out of a funding file and receives the money precisely because that information was missing risks between two and seven years in prison, even if no document in the file is forged. The Constitutional Court confirmed this rule through Decision no. 222 of 12 March 2026, published on 9 September 2026 in Official Gazette of Romania no. 766, dismissing as unfounded the criticism directed at the phrase „documente ori declarații false, inexacte sau incomplete”, false, inaccurate or incomplete documents or statements, in Article 181(1) of Law no. 78/2000. It is the second foreseeability criticism from a criminal case in Galați that the Court has dismissed within six days, after the one published on 3 September 2026, in which it held that the blood alcohol level is assessed at the moment of driving, not at the moment the sample is taken.

The plea was raised by Ion Susanu, tried before the Galați Tribunal, Criminal Section, in case no. 1.567/113/2018, for improper participation in the offence laid down by Article 181(1). The court referred the matter to the Constitutional Court by the interlocutory judgment of 16 July 2021, and at the Court the case was registered under no. 2.519D/2021. The tribunal gave its own view in that judgment: the plea is unfounded, because the constitutional court had already ruled on the same criticisms, in Decision no. 479 of 12 July 2018.

The text the decision reproduces, in paragraph 10, is this one: „Folosirea sau prezentarea cu rea-credință de documente ori declarații false, inexacte sau incomplete, dacă fapta are ca rezultat obținerea pe nedrept de fonduri din bugetul general al Uniunii Europene sau din bugetele administrate de aceasta ori în numele ei, se pedepsește cu închisoare de la 2 la 7 ani și interzicerea unor drepturi.” In English: using or presenting in bad faith false, inaccurate or incomplete documents or statements, where the act results in funds being wrongly obtained from the general budget of the European Union or from the budgets managed by it or on its behalf, is punishable by imprisonment from 2 to 7 years and a ban on certain rights. This is the form applicable to the act in the Galați file, not the form in force today, and the Court says so expressly in the next paragraph: paragraphs (1) and (2) were rewritten by Article I point 1 of Law no. 283/2020, published in Official Gazette of Romania no. 1.199 of 9 December 2020, without the criticised phrase being touched.

Both versions appeared in the Official Gazette of Romania in 2020. From 12 December 2020, that is three days after the publication of the amending law, paragraph (1) reads: „Folosirea sau prezentarea de documente ori declarații false, inexacte sau incomplete, dacă fapta are ca rezultat obținerea pe nedrept sau reținerea pe nedrept de fonduri ori active din bugetul Uniunii Europene sau bugetele administrate de aceasta ori în numele ei, se pedepsește cu închisoare de la 2 la 7 ani și interzicerea exercitării unor drepturi.” Three things changed: the express requirement of bad faith disappeared, wrongful retention was added alongside wrongful obtaining, and assets appeared alongside funds. The phrase the Court is now ruling on, false, inaccurate or incomplete documents or statements, stayed word for word the same in both versions.

The text requires no special capacity of the perpetrator. The offence can be committed by any natural or legal person who submits or uses documents in a European funding procedure, from a company applying for State aid to a farmer filling in a single payment claim. Paragraph (2) of the same article punishes with the same two to seven years the knowing failure to supply the data required by law for obtaining or retaining the funds. Paragraph (3) raises the limits by half, to a range from 3 years to 10 years and 6 months, where the act caused particularly serious consequences, a threshold defined by Article 183 of the Criminal Code as material damage above 2,000,000 lei. An attempt is punishable, under Article 184 of the same law, and Article 185 reaches, with imprisonment from 6 months to 3 years or a fine, the director, the manager or the person with decision-making or supervisory duties who negligently breaches a duty of the post and thereby makes a subordinate’s act possible.

The criticism directed at the text was one about the quality of the law, founded on Article 1(5) of the Constitution. The author of the plea argued that the material object of the offence is itself inaccurate, because the legislature uses the words „inaccurate” and „incomplete” without defining them anywhere, even though the material element resembles that of forgery in official documents in Article 321 of the Criminal Code, to which the rule makes no reference. The conclusion he asked the Court to reach: the legislature ought to say plainly whether obtaining European funds on the basis of forged documents falls to be judged under the rules on forgery or under this special text.

The Court answered by taking over in full the reasoning of Decision no. 101 of 10 March 2022, published in Official Gazette of Romania no. 650 of 30 June 2022, paragraphs 18 to 20, which say exactly what is attributed to them. From an analysis of the rule, the Court points out, the meaning emerges without difficulty: the documents are „eronate/greșite ori le lipsește una sau mai multe părți care compun un întreg, prezentând într-un mod denaturat situația de fapt reală/existentă”, erroneous or wrong, or missing one or more of the parts that make up a whole, presenting the real state of affairs in a distorted way. The notions are not defined because they need no definition: a statutory definition is given only where a word has several meanings or is used otherwise than in ordinary language, and „inaccurate” and „incomplete” keep their ordinary sense here, namely untrue, erroneous, wrong, incorrect. An inaccurate or incomplete document is, the Court says, one that does not faithfully reflect reality, „fără însă să se ridice la nivelul unui document fals”, without however rising to the level of a forged document.

The part that is useful to anyone submitting a funding file comes immediately after. The inaccurate or incomplete character consists, in the Court’s words, „fie în ajustarea acestora pentru a întruni criteriile de eligibilitate, fie în omiterea anumitor date/informații care ar putea descalifica persoana respectivă în inițiativa de a obține fondurile, cu condiția ca toate aceste ajustări/omisiuni să fie săvârșite cu intenție și să ducă la obținerea de fonduri”, either in adjusting them so as to meet the eligibility criteria, or in leaving out certain data or information that could disqualify the person concerned from obtaining the funds, provided that all these adjustments or omissions are committed intentionally and lead to funds being obtained. These are two patterns of behaviour, then, not an abstract formula: inflating or dressing up a document so that it passes a criterion, and staying silent about a piece of information that would have blocked the funding. Both require intent, and without money actually obtained the act remains, at most, an attempt.

For the grey area that is left, the Court relies on a principle of legislative technique taken from its own case law, Decisions no. 903 of 6 July 2010 and no. 743 of 2 June 2011, and from the case law of the European Court of Human Rights: it is hard to write a law of total precision, and a degree of flexibility may even be desirable, provided it does not damage foreseeability. In Cantoni v. France, paragraph 29 says that an offence must be clearly defined in law and that the requirement is met where the person can know, from the wording of the provision and, if need be, from the interpretation given by the courts, what acts and omissions will make them criminally liable. In Rotaru v. Romania, paragraph 55 defines foreseeability as sufficient precision for anyone, if need be with appropriate advice, to regulate their conduct. Both support what is attributed to them.

The second criticism, the one about the relationship with forgery in official documents, received a procedural answer rather than one on the merits. The Court pointed out that the argument does not concern the constitutionality of the text but the way the trial court applies it, and that under Article 2(3) of Law no. 47/1992 it cannot rule on the interpretation and application of the law. As a closing argument, the Court invokes Decision no. 3 of 20 January 2020 of the High Court of Cassation and Justice, Panel for the Resolution of Points of Criminal Law, published in Official Gazette of Romania no. 138 of 21 February 2020, by which the supreme court held that the forging of documents is not of the essence of the offence in Article 181, but merely one of the alternative ways in which the fraud can be committed.

The decision was taken unanimously, by a panel of eight judges chaired by Elena-Simina Tănăsescu, with Andrei Grigoraș as assistant magistrate. The quorum required by Article 51(1) of Law no. 47/1992 is two thirds of the number of judges, that is six out of nine, so it was met. None of the four authorities asked for their opinion, the presidents of the two Chambers of Parliament, the Government and the Ombudsman, replied.

What it changes in practice

The decision takes effect from publication, that is from 9 September 2026, under Article 147(4) of the Constitution, which provides that Constitutional Court decisions are generally binding from the date of publication and have effect only for the future. Since this is a dismissal, the effect on the law is nil: Article 181(1) applies exactly as it applied on 8 September, and no pending case changes because of this publication.

What does change is the procedural position of anyone who might want to take up the same criticism. The operative part finds the phrase constitutional „in relation to the criticisms raised”, so the formula does not legally block a fresh plea founded on a different constitutional text. A plea repeating the argument that the words „inaccurate” and „incomplete” are not foreseeable, however, runs into settled case law, and the Court said, in paragraph 16, that no new elements have arisen capable of changing it.

For a beneficiary of funds, the decision is a practical benchmark precisely because of the definition it consolidates. A document does not have to be forged in order to attract criminal liability. It is enough that it does not faithfully reflect reality, and that the adjustment or the omission was intentional and led to the money being obtained. The inflated cost estimate that gets past a ceiling, the certificate that leaves out pending litigation, the sworn statement that says nothing about a related company are exactly the patterns the Court describes.

The penalties remain those laid down by law and are worth rereading as an order of magnitude. The basic range is from 2 to 7 years in prison, plus a ban on exercising certain rights. Above the threshold of 2,000,000 lei in damage, Article 181(3) raises the special limits by half, which gives a range from 3 years to 10 years and 6 months. A second offence can be added to that: through Decision no. 3/2020, the High Court held that using forged private documents, by the same person who helped to forge them, gives rise to a real concurrence between the offence in Article 181(1) and forgery of private documents in Article 322(1) of the Criminal Code.

One effect that is not visible from the decision concerns the trial in Galați. Raising the plea did not stay the proceedings, because the paragraph that provided for a stay, Article 29(5) of Law no. 47/1992, was repealed by Article I point 3 of Law no. 177/2010, published in Official Gazette of Romania no. 672 of 4 October 2010. The 1,700 days that went by until delivery therefore did not block the criminal case, but they left the defendant almost five years without an answer to a defence that the trial court had passed on.

What has changed compared with the previous situation

In law, nothing. A dismissal does not amend the text and adds nothing to it. All that changes is the weight of the case law behind the outcome, and that is best measured by the length of the chain of decisions before it.

The chain is visible in the Court’s own decisions: in paragraph 17 of Decision no. 101/2022, the Court lists the earlier dismissals on the same text and on similar criticisms: Decision no. 897 of 17 December 2015, published in Official Gazette of Romania no. 228 of 28 March 2016, Decision no. 479 of 12 July 2018, published in Official Gazette of Romania no. 841 of 3 October 2018, Decision no. 748 of 20 October 2020, published in Official Gazette of Romania no. 68 of 21 January 2021, and Decision no. 481 of 13 July 2021, published in Official Gazette of Romania no. 1.095 of 17 November 2021. Adding Decision no. 101/2022 and the present one, the text has been through constitutional review six times and has stood every time. The prosecutor also relied, at the hearing, on Decision no. 85 of 25 February 2025.

The change that has occurred since the date of the act comes not from the Court but from Parliament. Law no. 283/2020, adopted in order to transpose Directive (EU) 2017/1.371 on the fight against fraud to the Union’s financial interests by means of criminal law, rewrote paragraphs (1) and (2) and widened the offence in two directions. First: what counts is no longer only obtaining the money, but also retaining it wrongfully, that is the situation of someone who keeps funding they were no longer entitled to. Second: assets now sit alongside funds. In exchange, the express requirement of bad faith left the text, which does not mean that the act can be committed by carelessness, since the very definition the Court maintains requires the adjustments and omissions to be committed intentionally.

It is also worth saying what has not changed in more than twenty years. Article 181 entered Law no. 78/2000 through Law no. 161/2003, published in Official Gazette of Romania no. 279 of 21 April 2003, and the present form of the section was given by Law no. 187/2012, applicable from 1 February 2014. The words „inaccurate or incomplete” have crossed all those amendments untouched.

Advantages and disadvantages

What it improves

  • The definition becomes easy to cite. The Court repeats, in terms identical to those of 2022, the two patterns of conduct: adjusting the document so that it meets an eligibility criterion, and leaving out information that would have disqualified the applicant. A consultant or a lawyer now has two published decisions with the same wording.
  • The threshold of guilt is clearly reaffirmed. The adjustment or the omission must be intentional and must lead to the funds being obtained, so a filling-in mistake with no consequences stays outside the offence.
  • The distinction between an inaccurate document and a forged one remains written in black and white: an inaccurate document does not faithfully reflect reality, but does not rise to the level of forgery. That is exactly the line along which the two classifications part.
  • The Court sends the courts to civil law in order to establish when a document recording a legal act is forged and when it is merely inaccurate, drawing the distinction between the expression of intent and the document that records it. That is a concrete benchmark, not a stylistic formula.
  • The outcome was adopted unanimously, with no dissenting or concurring opinion, so it leaves behind no divergence that another panel could use.

What remains a problem

  • The text reproduced in the Official Gazette of Romania is not the text in force. A reader who takes paragraph 10 for the current law will be working with a version replaced on 12 December 2020, and the warning appears only in the next paragraph, with no marker such as „former version”.
  • The time limits. Between the referring judgment of 16 July 2021 and the delivery of 12 March 2026, 1,700 days went by, and between delivery and publication another 181, in all 1,881 days for a case decided by reference to the Court’s own case law.
  • The criticism about the relationship with forgery in official documents receives no answer on the merits, only one about jurisdiction. The author is left without clarification, although his question concerned a genuine overlap between criminal provisions.
  • The closing paragraph identifies the High Court decision relied on as one about the relationship with Article 321 of the Criminal Code, although it concerns Article 322. See the section on errors.
  • The reference to the mechanisms for unifying case law is made to Articles 514 and 519 of the Code of Civil Procedure, in a criminal case where the counterparts are Articles 471 and 475 of the Code of Criminal Procedure.

Practical advice

  1. If you work with statutory texts, take Article 181 from the consolidated version, not from the decision. The version in force since 12 December 2020 also punishes the wrongful „retention” of funds „or assets”, situations missing from the quotation reproduced in paragraph 10.
  2. In any funding application, treat an omission as a statement. The Court says expressly that leaving out information that could disqualify you falls under the offence just as much as adjusting the documents, if it was done intentionally and the money was obtained.
  3. Keep a trace of the decisions taken in the file. Where a piece of information was left aside because the guide did not ask for it, or because the funding body confirmed that it was not relevant, that correspondence is the proof that there was no intent.
  4. Check sworn statements before submission, not after an audit. They are the „statements” in the very text of the offence, and an assertion overtaken by reality between signature and submission becomes inaccurate.
  5. If the file contains forged private documents and the same person helped both to forge and to use them, expect two offences, not one. High Court Decision no. 3/2020 establishes a real concurrence with Article 322(1) of the Criminal Code.
  6. Managers and people with supervisory duties should read Article 185 as well. Their liability can be engaged for negligence, for failing to perform or improperly performing a duty of the post which made a subordinate’s act possible.
  7. Do not build a defence on the lack of clarity of the words „inaccurate” and „incomplete”. Six Constitutional Court decisions, from 2015 to the present, have dismissed criticisms of that kind.

Frequently asked questions

What did the Constitutional Court decide, in short?
It dismissed the plea as unfounded and found that the phrase „false, inaccurate or incomplete documents or statements” in Article 181(1) of Law no. 78/2000 is constitutional in relation to the criticisms raised. The text stays in force, and the decision is final and generally binding.
Does the document have to be forged for there to be an offence?
No. The Court points out that an inaccurate or incomplete document is one that does not faithfully reflect reality, without rising to the level of a forged document. Forging is not of the essence of the offence, it is merely one of the ways in which it can be committed.
Can a filling-in mistake send me to prison?
Not by itself. The Court’s definition requires the adjustment or the omission to be committed intentionally and to lead to the funds being obtained. A mistake that did not produce that result and was not intentional stays outside the text.
What penalty does Article 181(1) lay down?
Imprisonment from 2 to 7 years and a ban on exercising certain rights. If the act caused particularly serious consequences, that is damage above 2,000,000 lei under Article 183 of the Criminal Code, the limits are raised by half, reaching a range from 3 years to 10 years and 6 months.
Why does the text in the decision differ from the one in the consolidated legislation?
Because the decision reproduces the version applicable to the act in the case, which predates Law no. 283/2020. Since 12 December 2020, paragraph (1) no longer expressly requires bad faith and also covers the wrongful retention of funds or assets. The criticised phrase, however, is identical in both versions.
Does the decision change anything for pending cases?
No. Being a dismissal, it does not amend the statutory text and creates no new ground of defence. Under Article 147(4) of the Constitution, the Court’s decisions take effect from publication and only for the future.
Can the same plea be raised again?
Formally yes, because the prohibition in Article 29(3) of Law no. 47/1992 concerns only texts declared unconstitutional by an earlier decision. In practice, an identical criticism runs into settled case law, which the Court has just reconfirmed.
Who can be criminally liable for a funding file containing inaccurate data?
The person who uses or presents the documents, whether a natural or a legal person, plus, for negligence, the director, the manager or the person with decision-making or supervisory duties, under Article 185 of Law no. 78/2000. An attempt is punishable, under Article 184.
What happens if the money was obtained lawfully but then kept without entitlement?
From 12 December 2020, the version in force of paragraph (1) also covers the wrongful retention of funds or assets, not only their obtaining. It is one of the extensions brought in by Law no. 283/2020, transposing Directive (EU) 2017/1.371.
How long did the case take?
The Galați Tribunal referred the matter to the Court by the interlocutory judgment of 16 July 2021, the decision was delivered on 12 March 2026, that is after 1,700 days, and it was published on 9 September 2026, another 181 days later. In all, 1,881 days.

Errors and inconsistencies in the published text

  • The unnumbered paragraph following paragraph 18, page 7, second column. The text says that the High Court ruled „cu privire la raportul dintre dispozițiile art. 181 alin. (1) din Legea nr. 78/2000 și cele ale art. 321 din Codul penal”, on the relationship between Article 181(1) of Law no. 78/2000 and Article 321 of the Criminal Code, and from the existence of that ruling it infers that the question raised by the author of the plea is one of interpretation and application of the law. The decision relied on, however, is Decision no. 3 of 20 January 2020 of the High Court of Cassation and Justice, Panel for the Resolution of Points of Criminal Law, published in Official Gazette of Romania no. 138 of 21 February 2020, and it concerns Article 322 of the Criminal Code, forgery of private documents (fals în înscrisuri sub semnătură privată), not Article 321, forgery in official documents (fals intelectual). The Court itself describes it correctly one paragraph earlier, in paragraph 18, as being about „concursul dintre infracțiunea de fals în înscrisuri sub semnătură privată și infracțiunea împotriva intereselor financiare ale Uniunii Europene”, the concurrence between forgery of private documents and the offence against the financial interests of the European Union. In the 2020 issue, the question put to the supreme court by the Iași Court of Appeal concerned forgery of private documents, the operative part establishes a real concurrence between Article 181(1) of Law no. 78/2000 and Article 322(1) of the Criminal Code, and the phrase „fals intelectual” appears nowhere in that issue of the Gazette. Article 321 does appear there three times, but only as a cross-reference from the text of Article 322 itself, which describes the ways of forging by reference to Article 320 or Article 321. The consequence: the only argument with which the Court closes its analysis of the second criticism, the one concerning the relationship with forgery in official documents, rests on a ruling that does not exist. A reader in good faith may understand either that the relationship between Article 181 and forgery in official documents has already been settled by the supreme court, or, on the contrary, that it has been settled only for forgery of private documents and remains open as regards Article 321.

Editorial analysis

On the merits, the outcome is the predictable one and it is correctly argued. The criticised phrase does have an ascertainable meaning, and the Court is not inventing it now: it takes it over from 2022 and expresses it in two operational terms, adjusting the document for eligibility and leaving out disqualifying data, both with intent and both with a result. The references it rests on hold: paragraphs 18 to 20 of Decision no. 101/2022 say what is attributed to them, and paragraph 29 of Cantoni v. France and paragraph 55 of Rotaru v. Romania do state the foreseeability test in the terms the Court uses. The problem with this decision is not what it says, but what it leaves untouched and how long it took to say it.

The figure that weighs heaviest is 1,700. That is how many days passed between the referring judgment of the Galați Tribunal, of 16 July 2021, and delivery, on 12 March 2026, for a case resolved by taking over a piece of reasoning from 2022 and by finding, in paragraph 16, that no new elements have arisen. Publication added another 181 days, more than the 112 that Decision no. 101/2022, cited by this one, needed. The delay is not a problem of principle: the plea had been raised in criminal proceedings which, since 2010, are no longer stayed, because Article 29(5) of Law no. 47/1992 was repealed by Law no. 177/2010. In other words, the trial went ahead, and the answer to the defendant’s argument arrived almost five years later.

The next observation concerns something that is not visible on a straight read through the decision and that could have closed the discussion on the merits rather than on jurisdiction. The author of the plea compared Article 181 with forgery in official documents in Article 321 of the Criminal Code. Article 321 punishes the forging of an official document at the time it is drawn up, „de către un funcționar public aflat în exercitarea atribuțiilor de serviciu”, by a public official in the exercise of their duties. The two texts cannot overlap, because one targets the official who draws up the document and the other the person who uses it to take money, and the object is an official document in one case and any document or statement in the other. A single paragraph would have been enough to show this, and the author of the plea would have left with an answer rather than with a reference to the jurisdiction of the courts. Instead, the Court took the procedural route and ended up relying on a High Court decision that it misidentified, as flagged in the section on errors.

The last observation is smaller, but it says something about the way reasoning is drafted. In order to explain who is responsible for unifying case law, the decision refers to Article 126(3) of the Constitution „raportate la art. 514 și 519 din Codul de procedură civilă”, read together with Articles 514 and 519 of the Code of Civil Procedure. The case is a criminal one, both High Court decisions relied on in the text are criminal, and Decision no. 3/2020 states its own legal basis, Article 477(3) of the Code of Criminal Procedure. The criminal counterparts of the two articles cited are Articles 471 and 475 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. The meaning of the sentence does not change, but the paragraph bears the mark of a formula reused from a civil case, which is hard to ignore in a piece of reasoning that has just reproached someone else for a lack of precision.

What should be changed

  • Express marking of the version reproduced. Where a decision quotes an earlier version of a text, the paragraph should say so in the introductory sentence itself, not in the following paragraph. Effect: a reader looking up the text of the offence in the Gazette no longer leaves with a version replaced in December 2020.
  • Correction of the reference to the High Court decision. Article 321 in the final paragraph should become Article 322, so as to match both paragraph 18 of the same decision and the operative part published in Official Gazette of Romania no. 138/2020. Effect: the closing argument becomes verifiable, and practitioners stop citing a ruling that does not exist.
  • Procedural references suited to the field. In a criminal case, the mechanisms for unifying case law are cited from the Code of Criminal Procedure, Articles 471 and 475. Effect: the reasoning no longer carries traces of formulas taken from another type of litigation.
  • An answer on the merits to criticisms about overlap between criminal provisions. Where the author of a plea compares two offences, the distinction between them is a matter of the content of the rules, not only of their application. Effect: pleas of this kind stop coming back, because they receive reasoning that exhausts them.
  • An internal deadline for cases decided by settled case law. Where the only operation is to check that no new elements have arisen, a file does not need four and a half years. Effect: trial courts get the answer while the case is still being heard, not after it has been through every level of appeal.
  • The definition, moved up into the law. The two patterns the Court has been repeating since 2022, adjustment for eligibility and disqualifying omission, could sit in an explanatory paragraph of Article 181. Effect: beneficiaries of funds find them in the text of the law, rather than in a piece of reasoning they first have to discover.

Original text of the legal act

The text below is reproduced in Romanian, the official form of publication.

The full text, as published in the Official Gazette of Romania

Official Gazette of Romania no. 766 of 9 September 2026 16 pages PDF, 115 KB the act starts on page 5

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This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. For specific situations, consult a licensed attorney or tax advisor.