If a "DAC6 notification" from your adviser has just landed in your inbox, treat it as a deadline, not a formality: a reporting obligation has lawfully shifted onto your company, and you typically have 30 days to act. The e-mail usually mentions "legal professional privilege", cites the Tax Procedure Code, and concludes that the duty to report now falls on you. Most entrepreneurs read it twice and archive it. That is the mistake.
DAC6 is the common name for Directive (EU) 2018/822, which introduced mandatory reporting of cross-border transactions that may be used in aggressive tax planning. In Romania it was transposed by Government Ordinance no. 5/2020 of 28 January 2020, which amended the Tax Procedure Code (Law no. 207/2015); Emergency Ordinance no. 107/2020 then deferred the first deadlines.
The legal reference points, according to the ANAF (the Romanian tax authority) guide, are three: Art. 286 — the definitions; Art. 291^4 — who reports, within what deadline, what information; Annex no. 4 — the hallmarks and the main benefit test. The precision is not pedantry: Art. 291^1 concerns DAC1 (salaries, pensions, real estate), Art. 291^3 country-by-country reporting (CbCR), Art. 291^5 platforms (DAC7), and Art. 291^6 crypto-assets (DAC8). A wrongly cited legal basis in an appeal against an administrative fine is an argument lost from the outset.
The analysis has two steps, in strict order. If step 1 is not passed, step 2 does not even arise: purely domestic operations never fall under DAC6.
"Arrangement" is a deliberately broad term: any transaction, payment, scheme or structure, including one made up of several steps — a loan comprises the agreement, the transfer of funds, the interest and the repayment, and all of it together is an arrangement. It is cross-border if it involves Romania and at least one other jurisdiction.
The hallmarks are listed exhaustively in Annex no. 4, and a single one is enough.
A(1) confidentiality: you accept a clause that prevents you from disclosing to other intermediaries or to the tax authority how the tax advantage is obtained. Ordinary commercial clauses protecting business secrets do not automatically trigger reporting. A(2) success fee: "I take 20% of the tax recovered". A(3) standardised documentation: an "off-the-shelf" structure with no substantive customisation.
B(1) acquiring loss-making companies: you buy a company with tax losses in another jurisdiction, stop its activity and use its losses. B(2) converting income: income is turned into capital, gifts or another, more lightly taxed category. B(3) circular transactions: round-tripping through interposed entities with no commercial purpose of their own.
C(1) deductible payments between associated enterprises, where the recipient is resident in no jurisdiction, is resident in a jurisdiction with no corporate tax or a near-zero rate (ANAF: below 1%), is on the EU non-cooperative list, or the payment benefits from a full exemption. C(2) double depreciation. C(3) multiple relief for the same income. C(4) transfers of assets valued materially differently.
D(1) circumventing CRS: moving accounts to jurisdictions with no automatic exchange, reclassifying income into non-reportable products, ownership structures built below the reporting threshold (beneficiaries with 24% where the threshold is 25%). D(2) opaque chains of beneficial owners: structures with no significant economic activity whose effect is to make the beneficiaries unidentifiable. The conditions are cumulative.
E(1) unilateral "safe harbours" that do not set the price on the arm's-length principle. E(2) hard-to-value intangibles: a transfer of intangibles with no reliable comparables. E(3) restructurings with the transferor's projected annual EBIT over the next 3 years below 50% of the no-transfer scenario — directly relevant to transfers of functions or assets out of Romania.
C(3) points to the double-taxation treaties, and D(1) directly to the automatic exchange of information on financial accounts (CRS/DAC2).
The hallmarks in categories A and B, plus C1(b)(i), C1(c) and C1(d) trigger reporting only if the main benefit — or one of the main benefits — that a person may reasonably expect to derive from the arrangement is a tax advantage.
The rest — C(1)(a) and (b)(ii), C(2)-C(4) and the whole of categories D and E — is reported independently of this test. This is the nuance most often missed: a restructuring with E(3) impact or a transfer of hard-to-value intangibles is reportable even if the motivation was strictly commercial. "I didn't do it for taxes" is a valid defence for A, B and the three sub-points of C1 — and irrelevant for D and E.
The Commission gives a useful example for A(3): a standardised restructuring plan sold exclusively to optimise production — the main benefit being efficiency, the arrangement is not reportable, even though the hallmark exists.
The obligation rests, primarily, on intermediaries: tax advisers, lawyers, accountants, banks — provided there is a connection with Romania (tax residence, a permanent establishment through which they provide services, incorporation or governance under Romanian law, registration with a professional association here). Routine activity does not make you an intermediary: the accountant who records an invoice, the adviser who fills in a return, the bank that executes a payment order — nor the auditor who later learns of an already-implemented arrangement.
The arrangement is developed in-house, with your own resources. The obligation is yours from the outset.
None of those in Art. 286(v)(1)-(5). The obligation passes to the relevant taxpayer.
The third scenario — and the one that generates the "DAC6 notice" you received.
Intermediaries bound by professional privilege report only with the relevant taxpayer's written consent. Absent consent, they must notify in writing, without delay, of the reporting obligation — and this is where the case law intervened.
By its judgment of 8 December 2022 (C-694/20, Orde van Vlaamse Balies), the Grand Chamber of the CJEU declared invalid, in light of Article 7 of the Charter, the obligation of a lawyer-intermediary to notify other intermediaries who are not their clients: such a notification discloses the identity of the lawyer consulted and the fact of the consultation. The obligation to notify one's own client remains valid.
By its judgment of 29 July 2024 (C-623/22, Belgian Association of Tax Lawyers), the Court confirmed the validity of DAC6 on the other contested aspects: the concepts of "arrangement", "intermediary", "hallmarks" and the 30-day deadline are sufficiently precise, the interference is proportionate, and reporting concerns only the information available, with no duty to investigate. Crucially: the protection from C-694/20 applies exclusively to lawyers practising under a title provided for in Directive 98/5/EC — not to tax advisers or accountants.
In response to C-694/20, DAC8 (Directive (EU) 2023/2226) amended the DAC6 text itself: an intermediary exempt on grounds of legal professional privilege notifies their client, applicable from 1 January 2026. Romania transposed DAC8 through Emergency Ordinance no. 71/2025 (Official Gazette no. 1146/10.12.2025), introducing in Art. 286(ee) the definition of "client", expressly "within the meaning of Art. 291^4": any intermediary or relevant taxpayer receiving services — including assistance, advice, guidance or direction — from an intermediary bound to observe legal professional privilege in connection with a reportable cross-border arrangement.
NOTE: In July 2026, the notification regime must be read on the consolidated text of the Tax Procedure Code, not on ANAF's DAC6 guide: the latter dates from January 2021, predates both CJEU judgments and the transposition of DAC8, and has not been updated. It remains useful for the hallmarks, but not for the notification regime.
Whatever the exact wording of Art. 291^4(8) in its current form, two things are certain and sufficient for orientation: a lawyer-intermediary cannot be required to notify other intermediaries who are not their clients — judgment C-694/20 has direct effect — and the obligation to notify one's own client subsists. Check the version of Art. 291^4(7)-(8) in force before building a procedural position on this text.
The deadline is 30 days and runs from the first of the following: the day after the arrangement is made available for implementation; the day after it is ready for implementation; or the moment of the first step of implementation. For marketable arrangements, the report is updated every 3 months.
Reporting is done via the smart PDF form approved by ANAF Order no. 1029/2020 (Official Gazette no. 407/18.05.2020) and is filed exclusively online, through e-guvernare.ro. Under ANAF Order no. 755/2025 (Official Gazette no. 566/19.06.2025), certain essential elements are reported in both Romanian and English, the description being forwarded to the authorities of other Member States. Where several persons have the same obligation, only one reports, and the others are exempt only if they prove that their information is contained in the filed report.
The penalties are in Art. 336 of the Tax Procedure Code, which treats two acts distinctly: non-reporting or late reporting of the arrangement — paragraph (1)(w) — and failure by the intermediary to notify — paragraph (1)(x). The first is penalised significantly more severely than the second.
On amounts. The fines under Art. 336(2) for these acts are significant, and their amounts are updated periodically: Art. 336 has been amended repeatedly, including by Emergency Ordinance no. 71/2025 and by Ordinance no. 1/2026, adding new letters and penalties. Check the version in force at the date of the act, on the consolidated text, before citing a figure or building a defence on it.
What matters in practice, beyond the amount: the fine is set between a minimum and a maximum, and the correct classification of the act — "late reporting", not "non-reporting" — usually has a greater effect on the outcome than the figure itself.
With no cross-border element there is no reportable arrangement.
However complex they may be.
For the hallmarks in categories A, B or C1(b)(i), C1(c), C1(d).
The cut-off date of the retroactive regime.
Moving money from an account into real estate is not CRS circumvention, real estate being excluded by definition. Hallmark D(1) is triggered only where a reportable account is converted or presented as non-reportable.
Categories D and E — regardless of motivation. Here the defence "I did it for commercial reasons" does not exist.
ANAF collects the declarations and transmits them, by automatic exchange, to the authorities of the other Member States — receiving, in return, the arrangements reported there that concern you. Around it sits the rest of the architecture: DAC2/CRS (financial accounts), DAC7 (Art. 291^5 — platforms), DAC8 (Art. 291^6 — crypto-assets, first reporting in 2027 for the 2026 year), DAC9 (Ordinance no. 1/2026).
The same arrangement may become visible simultaneously from the DAC6 declaration, from CRS data and from platform reporting — and the consistency between them is checked.
And establish when the deadline runs — not the date of the e-mail, but the making available, the readiness for implementation or the first step.
Which hallmark the intermediary identified, whether the main benefit test applies, and on what basis the exemption was invoked.
If another intermediary has a reporting obligation in Romania, your obligation may not have arisen.
And obtain the registration number and the arrangement code — the documents that exempt you on an ANAF request.
If you have connections with several Member States: tax residence, then the permanent establishment that benefits from the arrangement, then the state from which you derive income, then the one in which you carry on activity.
If the deadline has passed, report anyway: the difference between "late reporting" and "non-reporting" is, at the setting of the fine, the difference between the minimum and the maximum.
The most frequent exposure I encounter in practice is not this year's arrangement, but the one from 2019 or 2021 that nobody questioned at the right moment. The regime was retroactive by design: arrangements whose first step was taken between 25 June 2018 and 30 June 2020 had to be reported by 28 February 2021, and those from 1 July - 31 December 2020, by 31 January 2021.
Many companies passed through those deadlines with no analysis at all, because no one told them that an intra-group loan with deductible interest to a jurisdiction with symbolic taxation might be "aggressive tax planning". The obligation did not lapse — and when an inspection opens the transfer-pricing file, the arrangement surfaces anyway.
On 24 June 2026, the European Commission adopted a tax simplification package that includes a recast of the Directive on Administrative Cooperation, codifying the nine DAC directives into a single instrument. For DAC6, the proposal provides for: the complete removal of the category A hallmarks, which, being generic, produced disproportionate reporting; extending the deadline from 30 to 90 days, running only from the first actual step of implementation; an exclusion for groups within the scope of Pillar 2; narrowing the definition of a reportable arrangement to those actually capable of implementation — a reflex of judgment C-623/22; and the codification of the CJEU solutions on professional privilege.
The anti-shell principles from the ATAD 3 ("Unshell") proposal, abandoned at Council level in June 2025, were also redirected here: the substance criteria are to be developed within hallmark D2, through a Council implementing act, within a five-year period. The "frontloaded" simplification measures are expected to apply from 2028, the rest by 2030.
This is a proposal, not positive law. Until adoption and transposition, the current regime remains fully in force, including category A and the 30-day deadline — and the belief that "it will change anyway" does not defer any reporting due today.
It depends on the hallmark. For categories A, B and for C1(b)(i), C1(c), C1(d), the absence of a tax advantage as a main benefit excludes reporting. But if the restructuring falls under E(3) — an intra-group transfer of functions, risks or assets with projected EBIT below 50% of the no-transfer scenario — or under E(2), C(2)-C(4) or category D, reporting is due regardless of motivation.
If the intermediary reports, your obligation is not triggered. But the exemption is not presumed: on ANAF's request you must produce confirmation of the form's registration number and the arrangement's identification code. If the report was made in another Member State, the copy of the reported information and confirmation of the code allocated there. Ask for them now, not during an audit.
No, without your written consent. In its absence, the CJEU held in C-694/20 that a lawyer cannot be required to notify other intermediaries who are not their clients. The duty to notify you, as the client, of your own reporting obligation remains. Under C-623/22, this protection applies only to lawyers, not to tax advisers or accountants.
The obligation subsists, and the deadline has passed — the act falls under Art. 336(1)(w) of the Tax Procedure Code. Voluntary filing, even late, turns the situation from "non-reporting" into "late reporting", which matters when the fine is set. The analysis is done arrangement by arrangement, however: not everything that seems reportable is.
Informational material, updated as at 18 July 2026. It does not constitute legal or tax advice; individual situations must be analysed case by case, on the texts in force at the date of the act.
Deadlines run from the moment of communication. An initial discussion clarifies what is being alleged, what you need to justify and how the defence is built — before an estimate becomes a tax assessment.