If you live in Romania and work remotely for a company in Berlin, Amsterdam or Austin, your salary arrives in full — no one withholds anything. That absence of withholding is not an exemption; it is a shift of the obligation entirely onto you, with monthly returns and deadlines. This matters for expats living in Romania and Romanians who never regularised their remote arrangement.
The employer tells you, correctly from its side, that "the taxes are your problem, you are in Romania". You draw the conclusion, incorrectly, that if no one withholds anything, nothing is owed. The gap between those two readings is measured, after a few years, in tens of thousands of lei, plus interest and penalties.
The starting point is Article 15 of the OECD Model tax convention, taken over, with minor variations, in the treaties concluded by Romania. The rule is simple and counter-intuitive for many: salaries are taxed in the state where the activity is actually exercised — not in the state where the employer is registered, and not in the state from which payment is made.
If you live in Romania and perform the work from Romania, the state of exercise is Romania. Since, in parallel, you are also a Romanian tax resident under the criteria in Article 7 point 28 of the Fiscal Code — domicile, centre of vital interests, or presence over 183 days — the two criteria converge: the taxing right belongs to Romania, in full.
The exception in Article 15(2) of the treaties — the "183-day rule", with its three cumulative conditions (stay under 183 days, remuneration paid by an employer not resident in the state of activity, cost not borne by a permanent establishment there) — protects short trips to another state. It has nothing to protect when the state of activity coincides with the state of residence. If tax is nonetheless withheld in the employer's state, the situation is resolved through the treaty and a refund claim there — not by dropping the declaration in Romania.
And the assumption that "it won't show" no longer holds. On 24 June 2026, ANAF (the Romanian tax authority) announced a new wave of notices to persons with foreign income for 2025, identified through the automatic exchange of information: DAC1 for employment income reported by EU states, CRS/DAC2 for accounts at foreign financial institutions, and from 2026 the framework introduced by Emergency Ordinance no. 71/2025 for the reporting of crypto-assets.
Here the mechanism that most often surprises people comes in: the Fiscal Code treats income tax and social contributions separately, and the two do not cover each other.
Article 82 of the Fiscal Code: someone who performs the activity in Romania and earns salary from abroad declares and pays the tax monthly, by the 25th of the following month inclusive. The rate is 10%, as on any Romanian salary.
Article 146 of the Fiscal Code and ANAF Order no. 3706/2016: either you conclude a written agreement with the employer and file form D112 yourself, or the employer registers for tax in Romania and files it.
Pension contribution (CAS) 25% and health contribution (CASS) 10% of gross income, uncapped, plus the 10% tax. With no withholding at source, all three are declared and paid by you.
Form 224 — "Return on salary and salary-equivalent income from abroad earned by individuals who carry on activity in Romania" — is governed by ANAF Order no. 3780/2017. It is active and up to date: version 3.0.0 was published by ANAF on 27 April 2026 and reflects the changes to the salary-tax calculation made by Emergency Ordinance no. 8/2026 (additional deductions from net income — occupational pensions, PEPP, sums paid to acquire shares), applicable to income earned from March 2026. Form 224 is not filed by those for whom the employer itself meets the obligations to calculate, withhold and pay the tax, or for whom an agreement to that effect has been concluded.
For contributions, the agreement with the employee means a document containing the elements needed to determine them correctly — among others the employer's principal-activity industry code and the working conditions. You register for tax (form 020, or 030 for persons without a Romanian personal numeric code), file a translated and legalised copy of the agreement, then file form 112 monthly and pay the contributions. On termination, an amendment return removes the obligations from the "fiscal vector" (your registered tax-obligation profile). In the absence of an agreement, the non-resident employer registers itself (form 015) and files D112; the same solution is provided, with form 010, for employers from states not covered by the EU social-security legislation or by agreements to which Romania is a party.
IMPORTANT: The two obligations do not extinguish one another. If you have concluded an agreement with the employer, you file D112, which covers both the tax and the contributions. If you have no agreement and the employer has not registered in Romania either, you are left with form 224 for the tax — but the contributions do not disappear: not paying them means years without pensionable service and without insured status, plus a tax claim that accrues monthly.
The Fiscal Code and the procedure approved by ANAF Order no. 3706/2016 provide only the two paths above by which contributions can be declared and paid correctly. Where neither exists, the obligation is not extinguished — but it also has no configured fiscal vector, and payment simply cannot be made. The situation must be clarified specifically with the competent tax office, after first determining the applicable social-security legislation under Regulation (EC) no. 883/2004. ANAF's right to establish tax claims lapses, as a rule, after 5 years; until then, every undeclared month stays open.
In the EU, tax and contributions do not follow the same logic. Tax is split under the double taxation treaty; contributions are determined under Regulation (EC) no. 883/2004 on the coordination of social-security systems. Its principle is singleness: a person is subject to the legislation of a single member state, and the general rule is lex loci laboris — the legislation of the state where the activity is carried out. For someone working exclusively from Romania for an employer in another member state, the result is, as a rule, the application of Romanian legislation.
For someone working in two or more states, Article 13 of the Regulation applies, and the practical benchmark is the 25% threshold: if you carry out a substantial part of the activity (25% or more) in your state of residence, the legislation of that state applies in principle; below the threshold, there are arguments for keeping the employer's-state system. The document attesting the applicable legislation is the A1 certificate — it does not "choose" the state, but confirms the result of the analysis, and it is requested in advance, not after an audit.
Since 1 July 2023 there is also a multilateral framework agreement on cross-border teleworking, based on Article 16(1) of Regulation 883/2004, which allows the employee to be kept in the employer's-state system even if teleworking from the state of residence represents between 25% and under 50% of working time. The essential condition: both states must be signatories.
Romania is not among the signatory states of the framework agreement. In mid-2026 the agreement had 23 participating states, the most recent to join being Estonia, from 1 February 2026. The consequence is concrete: the 25%-to-under-50% exception is available neither to Romanian employers nor to Romania-resident employees of an employer in a signatory state. What remains is the classic Article 13 analysis and the A1 document. The updated list of signatories and the date from which the agreement applies in each state are published by the Belgian social-security administration, as depositary state.
The most frequent confusion is that the "digital nomad regime" is available to Romanians working remotely from Romania. It is not.
The framework was created by Law no. 22/2022, which amended Emergency Ordinance no. 194/2002 on the regime of foreigners in Romania, applicable from 17 January 2022. A digital nomad is a foreigner employed by a company outside Romania who provides services online, or who owns such a company. The long-stay visa is granted by diplomatic missions and consular offices if the applicant proves means of support of at least three times the average gross monthly wage for each of the last six months before the application and for the entire visa period (in 2026, by reference to RON 9,192). Under Emergency Ordinance no. 32/2026, the medical insurance must also cover repatriation on medical grounds, emergency treatment and hospitalisation, and death, and be valid across EU member states, with minimum cover kept at EUR 30,000.
The tax benefit was introduced into the Fiscal Code by Law no. 69/2023, applicable from 2 April 2023: salary income earned by a person with digital-nomad status, from a company registered outside Romania, is not taxable in Romania and does not attract the pension (CAS) and health (CASS) contributions, provided the person is present on Romanian territory for at most 183 days — in one or several cumulative periods — within any period of 12 consecutive months ending in the calendar year in question.
Two points close the discussion. First: the exemption is aimed at the foreigner with a digital-nomad visa, not at a Romanian citizen domiciled here. Second: the 183-day threshold is precisely the tax-residence threshold — above it, the digital nomad becomes a Romanian tax resident and enters the ordinary regime.
An aspect employers discover late: the presence of an employee working steadily from another state can create a permanent establishment there, with obligations to register, to pay corporate tax and to report. Teleworking, on its own, does not automatically create a permanent establishment, but the risk grows when the employer requires or funds the use of a particular space, when the employee's home becomes a fixed place of business made available to the enterprise and — above all — when the employee habitually negotiates and concludes contracts on behalf of the company (the dependent-agent scenario). The November 2025 update of the OECD Model tax convention addresses this problem directly.
For the employee, the stakes are not theoretical: an exposure discovered retroactively can end the employment relationship faster than anyone expected.
For those with no employment contract, who instead invoice services to clients abroad as a sole trader (PFA — "persoană fizică autorizată", the authorised-individual form of self-employment), the rules are different — and VAT is where most of the surprises arise.
The independent-activity income of a Romanian tax resident is taxable in Romania regardless of the client's origin: it is declared through the annual income return (Declarația unică / D212), on a real or flat-rate basis, with a 10% tax and contributions due according to the statutory thresholds. For VAT, on services supplied to a taxable person (B2B), the general rule in Article 278(2) of the Fiscal Code places the place of supply at the customer.
The invoice is issued without VAT, with the mention "reverse charge", and the customer applies the reverse charge in its own state.
Even if you are not registered for VAT under the normal regime, you must obtain the special VAT code before the first transaction, through form 700 filed in the SPV portal.
Intra-EU supplies of services are reported monthly, by the 25th of the following month inclusive, only for months with transactions. For services purchased from the EU you owe VAT under the reverse charge and file the special return 301.
For a taxable-person client outside the EU, the place of supply is also at the customer, the invoice is issued without Romanian VAT, but the transaction is not reported in form 390. For an individual (non-taxable) client in the EU, Romanian VAT generally applies.
The VAT exemption threshold is RON 395,000, in force from 1 September 2025 and applicable in 2026, up from the old RON 300,000. An element often ignored but decisive precisely for the freelancer with foreign clients: from 2026, supplies of goods and services with the place of taxation outside Romania are no longer included in the turnover calculation for the exemption threshold. Which does not exempt you from anything regarding the special code: the obligation under Article 317 exists independently of the threshold.
The company and the shareholder are separate tax subjects. If the work is performed from Brașov, the salary is taxable in Romania. Moreover, if the company is effectively managed from Romania, it too may be classified as tax resident here. E-Residency gives access to electronic administration, not tax residence.
The health contribution (CASS) is not an optional premium but a mandatory contribution. Not paying it produces no saving, but a debt bearing ancillary charges and the loss of insured status.
Financial institutions in more than 100 jurisdictions report annually, through CRS/DAC2, the balances and proceeds of Romania-resident holders, and salaries reported by EU states reach ANAF through DAC1.
If the activity is performed entirely from Romania, Germany has, as a rule, no right to tax the salary under Article 15 of the Romania–Germany treaty. The withholding is in principle not due and is recovered through a claim to the German administration, based on your Romanian tax residence certificate. Meanwhile, the obligation to declare and pay in Romania remains full.
The refusal exempts neither of you. In the absence of an agreement, the obligation to register for tax in Romania and file D112 falls on the non-resident employer (form 015) — in practice, many employers prefer the agreement precisely to avoid registering themselves. If neither option materialises, the situation must be clarified with the competent tax office: paying contributions without a correctly configured fiscal vector cannot be done.
There is no single threshold. For tax, the treaty benchmark is 183 days in 12 months, with the three cumulative conditions of Article 15(2). For contributions, in the EU, the benchmark is 25% of activity in the state of residence. For tax residence, the criteria of Article 7 point 28 operate in parallel. The three analyses are distinct and can give different results for the same person.
You risk assessment of the tax and contributions on the authority's own initiative, with interest of 0.02%/day and late-payment penalties of 0.01%/day, plus fines for not filing returns. In cases with large differences, the analysis can move towards a personal tax-position review and the 70% tax on income of unidentified source. A voluntary filing, before an audit begins, remains the path with the best risk/cost ratio — also because it removes the 0.08%/day non-declaration penalty applicable to obligations established by the tax authority.
Informational material, updated on 18 July 2026. It does not constitute legal or tax advice; individual situations must be assessed case by case.
Time limits run from the moment of communication. An initial discussion clarifies what is alleged, what you need to justify and how the defence is built — before an estimate becomes a tax assessment.