Between July 2025 and May 2026, ANAF's specialised units, Romania's national tax administration, carried out 1,102 verification actions against individuals and established additional tax liabilities of more than 540 million lei. Among the situations they run into most often is exactly the “ordinary” money: cash deposits into personal accounts, transfers from relatives, undocumented loans. Here are the thresholds currently in force, what is reported and to whom, and how to properly document money received or given.
The cash regime is set out in Legea nr. 70/2015, amended successively (most substantially by Legea nr. 296/2023 and OUG nr. 115/2023, and, from 1 January 2026, also by Legea nr. 239/2025). The form in force, summarised by ANAF in an official document published in January 2026, is as follows.
Maximum 5,000 lei per day from one person (10,000 lei for cash-and-carry stores).
Maximum 5,000 lei per person per day, but no more than an overall cap of 10,000 lei per day. Payments from advances for settlement: 5,000 lei per day per person.
Maximum 50,000 lei at the end of each day (500,000 lei for cash-and-carry stores, supermarkets and hypermarkets); the surplus is deposited at the bank within two working days.
5,000 lei is paid in cash, the rest exclusively through non-cash instruments. Splitting payments and invoices is prohibited.
10,000 lei per day from or to one person for supplies of goods, provision of services, dividends, assignments of receivables or other rights. Splitting is prohibited (except for sales paid in instalments, under a contract).
Whatever the direction or purpose, these are made only through non-cash instruments (Article 4(4) of Legea 70/2015). Funding your own company “with cash”, a practice still common among small SRLs, is an administrative offence.
50,000 lei per transaction per day for the transfer of ownership of goods or rights, the provision of services, and the granting or repayment of loans. Splitting a transaction above this threshold is prohibited.
Article 5 of the law: depositing cash into your own accounts (including at deposit-enabled ATMs), withdrawals for paying wages, payment of taxes and duties, transfers through payment institutions.
What is new in 2026, and the penalty. Under Legea nr. 239/2025, from 1 January 2026 all legal entities are required to hold a payment account in Romania or at the State Treasury (newly formed ones, within 60 working days of registration; a fine of 3,000 to 10,000 lei), and traders registered with the trade registry (registrul comertului) must also accept modern means of payment (OUG nr. 193/2002; a fine of 20,000 to 50,000 lei). The general penalty for exceeding the cash thresholds: a fine of 25% of the amount exceeding the threshold, but not less than 500 lei, with no option to pay half the minimum within 15 days.
A point often misunderstood: Legea 70/2015 does not cap bank transfers, only cash. Through the bank you can transfer any amount. Except that this exact banking trail is perfectly visible to the authorities, which brings us to the next point. And that is also why you can lawfully deposit any amount at the bank: the problem that remains is a different one, being able to prove where the money came from.
One channel goes to the Oficiul National de Prevenire si Combatere a Spalarii Banilor (ONPCSB), Romania's financial intelligence unit against money laundering; the other goes to ANAF. They work independently, with different thresholds and time limits, and together they cover practically the entire financial picture of an individual.
Credit institutions and other reporting entities send the Office, within a maximum of 3 working days:
In lei or foreign currency, including transactions that “are linked to each other”; several correlated deposits are added together.
Into and out of accounts, the equivalent in lei or foreign currency.
Transfers arising from money remittance activity.
Here it is the pattern that matters, not the amount: repeated deposits just under the threshold, account activity inconsistent with the declared profile, immediate withdrawals after receipts. The bank does not tell you it has reported you; the law forbids it to.
Also under this law, the bank applies customer due diligence measures: it can ask you for documents on the source of the funds and can refuse the transaction or even end the business relationship if the explanations are not satisfactory.
Daily, credit institutions, payment institutions and electronic money issuers send the list of account holders, whether individuals, legal entities or other entities, who open or close accounts, together with their identification data, the persons with signing rights, the proxies, the beneficial owners, and the list of persons who rent safe-deposit boxes.
At the request of the central tax authority, banks report, for each account holder concerned, the account turnover and/or balances, as well as the information and documents on transactions carried out through those accounts. The time limits are short and are set by the procedure issued to implement Article 61: a maximum of 5 working days for requests covering a period of up to 3 years and a maximum of 10 working days for requests covering a period of more than 3 years, in the case of turnover and balances; for information and documents on transactions carried out through accounts, the time limit is a maximum of 25 working days from the date of the request.
To this is added the international exchange of information: the balances of accounts held abroad reach ANAF every year through the CRS mechanism, and from 2026 crypto-asset service providers report clients' transactions under DAC8 (transposed by OUG nr. 71/2025). The financial picture of an individual is, in practice, complete.
ANAF works on risk analysis: it compares “uses of funds” (property purchases, car purchases, increases in account balances, loans made to companies, investments) with declared income. The threshold that triggers interest is a significant difference, more than 10% of declared income, but not less than 50,000 lei (Article 138 of the Tax Procedure Code).
The first signal is usually the compliance notice (notificare de conformare) (Article 140¹ of the Tax Procedure Code): you are told about the discrepancies and given 30 days to file or correct returns. If the risk persists, next comes the review of your personal tax position: a review notice, a request for documents, the statement of assets and income, and reconstruction of income by indirect methods over the 5-year limitation period.
The typical questions in these procedures: what is the source of the repeated cash deposits into your personal accounts; where the amounts you used to fund the company came from (the balances of accounts 455/462 in the balance sheet are checked); who transferred money to you and on what basis; how the purchases correlate with the income of the relevant years. The stakes have risen sharply: from 1 July 2024, income whose source has not been identified is taxed at 70% of the adjusted taxable base (Article 117 of the Tax Code, amended by Legea nr. 296/2023), and under OPANAF nr. 768/2026 (Monitorul Oficial of 6 July 2026) the power to carry out such reviews was extended to inspectors of the General Anti-Fraud Directorate.
NOTE: In the review of your personal tax position, the burden of justifying the source of each sum falls, in practice, on you. Explanations such as “I saved it up over time”, “it is wedding gifts”, “my family gave it to me”, with no supporting document, do not remove the risk, they confirm it. The difference between a documented sum and the same sum undocumented can, at the limit, be the difference between zero tax and 70% plus interest and penalties. The documents are put together at the time of the transaction, not five years later, during the audit.
A loan of money between individuals is perfectly lawful (Article 2158 et seq. of the Civil Code) and does not, as a rule, require any particular form for its validity. The problem is evidence, especially before ANAF, years later.
For legal transactions above 250 lei, witness evidence is in principle inadmissible (Article 309 of the Code of Civil Procedure). Without a document, the loan is almost impossible to prove.
The parties, the amount, the date the money is handed over, the term and method of repayment, and the interest, if any, which is taxable income for the lender and must be declared.
A notary, a lawyer, an institution's registry: the element that separates a credible contract from one suspected of having been “fabricated” retroactively for an audit.
Recommended by bank transfer, with the explicit reference “loan under contract of [date]”. In cash, only within the limit of 50,000 lei per transaction, a threshold that also applies to repayment.
Loans between a shareholder and the company, in either direction, are carried out exclusively through the bank (Article 4(4) of Legea 70/2015).
A bank statement, a receipt, or a written acknowledgement of receipt. A loan “repaid” with no trace becomes unexplained income for the lender again.
The rule in the Civil Code is strict: a gift is made by an authentic notarial deed, on pain of absolute nullity (Article 1011(1)). The exception relevant to money is the manual gift (dar manual): corporeal movable property, including sums of money, of up to 25,000 lei, can be validly given by the mere agreement of the parties accompanied by actual delivery (Article 1011(4)).
In practice: for small amounts, handing over the money by bank transfer with the reference “gift” at least creates a clear trace of the date, amount, and parties. For large amounts, the authentic notarial form remains the safe option: unquestionable validity, a certain date, complete evidence.
For tax purposes, sums received as a gift by an individual are not, as a rule, taxable income. But in a review the gift has to be proved: who gave it, when, how much, and, increasingly often, the tax authority also checks the donor's financial capacity. A “gift from parents” that the parents, being pensioners, could not have made out of their own income shifts the problem, it does not solve it. Even between parents and children, put significant sums in writing: being related does not stand in for a document.
For any significant amount. A bank transfer fixes the date, the amount, the parties, and the explanation for the payment, exactly the elements ANAF later asks for.
A loan agreement, a deed of gift, a receipt, drawn up at the time of the transaction, not reconstructed for an audit.
“Loan under contract of 12 March 2026”, “loan repayment”, “gift”, not “account top-up” or a blank field.
A notary, certification by a lawyer, or registration in a public register, for documents under private signature.
Bank statements, contracts, deeds of sale for the assets the money came from, currency exchange documents. A review covers the 5-year limitation period.
Interest received must be declared; repeated receipts from sales or services can raise the issue of reclassification as an economic activity, with registration obligations and contributions.
A compliance notice or a request for information has short time limits, and the quality of the first response decisively shapes the course of the procedure. Assess with a professional what documents to submit and how to present them.
Parents working abroad send a monthly amount to the child left at home, or a sibling in Germany transfers money for the deposit on a flat. The tax treatment is the same as between residents: a gift is not taxable income. What changes is the evidence and, sometimes, the question about the other end of the transfer.
Sums received as a gift from an individual abroad are not taxable income for the recipient and are not declared in the Declarația unică (Form 212), Romania's single annual return for income tax and social contributions owed by individuals, just like sums received from a donor in Romania. The international bank transfer is, in itself, evidence of the transaction, but not of its legal basis: the statement shows that the money arrived, not why it arrived.
That is why, for amounts exceeding ordinary needs, a deed of gift, even under private signature for sums of money, identifying the donor and the purpose, is the document that turns an unexplained transfer into an explained gift. For large amounts, the authentic form, before a Romanian notary or a foreign one with an apostille, removes the discussion. Regular monthly transfers, for maintenance, are documented more simply, by their consistency and by the family relationship.
The other end of the transfer matters in the review of your personal tax position. The tax authority can ask not only whether the money is a gift, but whether the donor had it: a parent with income declared in their state of residence, sending part of it, is a verifiable source; a donor with no known income, sending large amounts, shifts the question to where the money came from. Evidence of the donor's income, payslips or tax returns from the foreign state, should be kept together with the contract.
The bank in Romania reports transfers above the thresholds to the Oficiul Național de Prevenire și Combatere a Spălării Banilor (ONPCSB), regardless of their legal basis, and if the recipient also holds accounts abroad, these reach ANAF through the automatic exchange of information. No gift is hidden; it is only, or is not, documented.
The reverse situation, money you send to a relative abroad, follows the same rules in Romania and, in addition, the rules of the destination state, where some jurisdictions tax gifts in the hands of the recipient. For large amounts, check beforehand, not afterwards.
Yes. The thresholds in Legea 70/2015 do not apply to cash deposits into your own account. However, deposits from the equivalent of EUR 10,000 upwards are automatically reported to the Office, the bank can ask you for documents on the source of the funds, and ANAF can later ask you to justify the amounts. The lawfulness of the deposit does not replace justifying the source.
For an ordinary civil loan between individuals not acting within an economic activity, the law does not require the contract itself to be registered with the tax authority. However, the agreed interest is taxable income and must be declared. We recommend a document with a certain date and payment through the bank, for evidence, not because there is a registration requirement.
Sums received as a gift are not, as a rule, taxable income for an individual. They do, however, have to be proved: a deed of gift or a bank transfer with a reference, plus, ideally, evidence of the donor's financial capacity. Without evidence, in a review, the sum risks being treated as income with an unidentified source.
The fine is 25% of the amount exceeding the threshold, but not less than 500 lei, with no benefit of paying half the minimum. Separately from the administrative offence, the underlying tax risk remains: amounts received and not declared can generate tax, contributions, late-payment charges (accesorii: interest and penalties), and, in the scenario of income with an unidentified source, the 70% rate.
At the request of the central tax authority, the time limits set by the procedure issued to implement Article 61 of the Tax Procedure Code are a maximum of 5 working days for the turnover and balances relating to a period of up to 3 years, and a maximum of 10 working days for periods longer than 3 years. For information and documents on transactions carried out through accounts, the time limit is a maximum of 25 working days. Separately, the list of those who open or close accounts is sent daily.
Informative material, updated on 18 September 2026. It does not constitute legal or tax advice; individual situations must be assessed on their own facts.
If you have an inspection under way or have just received a notification, the related analyses are grouped under tax inspection and the review of individuals. For how such matters are handled, see tax assistance.
Time limits run from the date of communication. A first conversation clarifies what is being alleged, what you need to substantiate and how the defence is built, before an estimate becomes a tax assessment decision.