Romania TVA for Foreign & Local Businesses — 2026 Guide

On 1 January 2025, every business-to-consumer invoice issued in Romania became legally invalid unless cleared through RO e-Factura. That single date — quiet on the surface, transformational underneath — completed Romania’s three-year migration from one of the EU’s least digitally-supervised TVA regimes to one of the most aggressive. Every invoice, every value, every counterparty: visible to ANAF in real time, cross-checked against SAF-T D406 monthly extracts, joined up with RO e-Transport vehicle movements, and analysed by an automated risk engine that surfaces discrepancies within days.

For a foreign vendor selling into Romania — Tunisian, French, German, Chinese — and for any Romanian-resident business operating above the small-trader threshold, the practical implication is the same: TVA in Romania is no longer a quarterly retrospective filing exercise. It is a continuous reporting environment in which compliance happens in the same minute the invoice is issued, and in which legacy invoicing software, manual processes, or off-system corrections trigger immediate exposure. This guide is the operator’s view of how the Romanian TVA system actually works in 2026: where the 19% rate applies and where 9% or 5% bites, how e-Factura integrates with your invoicing system, what e-Transport adds on top of standard TVA, what foreign vendors need to know about OSS and IOSS as alternatives to direct Romanian registration, and what changes between now and ViDA’s 2030 milestone.

What this guide covers

01  Snapshot — Romanian TVA at a glance

02  60-second self-check — does this guide apply to you?

03  Track 1 — Foreign EU vendor selling into Romania

04  Track 2 — Non-EU vendor selling into Romania

05  Track 3 — Higher-value goods, marketplaces, e-Transport, and e-commerce

06  Track 4 — Local Romanian business — TVA from registration onward

07  Cross-track essentials — e-Factura, SAF-T D406, OSS/IOSS, VIES, ViDA

08  Common questions answered properly

09  Recent changes and the road to ViDA

10  Primary sources & official references

01 · Snapshot — Romanian TVA at a glance

Everything you need to orient before reading the persona tracks. Every figure here is restated and sourced inside the relevant track.

02 · 60-second self-check — does this guide apply to you?

Six questions. If any answer is yes, the corresponding track is mandatory reading before you transact.

03 · Track 1 — Foreign EU vendor selling into Romania

You are established in another EU Member State — Hungary, Bulgaria, Germany, Austria, Italy — and you sell goods or services to Romanian customers. Your operational model determines whether you can stay registered only in your home Member State and use Union OSS, or whether you must take Romanian TVA registration directly.

3.1  The Union OSS path for distance sales

The EU-wide €10,000 annual distance-selling threshold applies across all 27 Member States combined. Above the threshold you must charge VAT at destination from the first euro. Union OSS allows registration in your home Member State, application of 19% Romanian TVA on B2C goods and digital supplies destined for Romanian consumers, and a single quarterly return covering all Member States. The Romanian share settles inter-state.

Romania-specific OSS considerations:

• RO e-Factura does not apply to Union OSS supplies. OSS invoices are not transmitted through the Romanian e-Factura clearance system.
• Romanian TVA classification (19% / 9% / 5%) applies to OSS supplies based on the underlying product. Pharmaceuticals and basic food sold via cross-border B2C distance sales attract 9% rather than 19%.
• Union OSS does not cover supplies from stock physically located in Romania. Holding fulfilment stock anywhere on Romanian soil triggers direct TVA registration.

3.2  When direct Romanian TVA registration becomes unavoidable

Direct ANAF registration is mandatory when:

• You hold stock in Romania — Bucharest, Cluj-Napoca, Timișoara, Constanța port, or any marketplace fulfilment centre.
• You make domestic supplies from Romanian stock.
• You acquire goods from another Member State and bring them into Romania in your own name.
• You import goods into the EU through Constanța port or Henri Coandă airport in your own name.
• You provide services with place of supply in Romania that are not covered by the reverse-charge mechanism (immovable property services on Romanian land, conference services held in Romania).

3.3  Registration mechanics

Romanian TVA registration is filed with ANAF through the Spațiul Privat Virtual (SPV) electronic portal. The application — Form 010 for legal persons — requires:

• Certificate of incorporation and home-state VAT registration confirmation (apostilled where required).
• Articles of association translated into Romanian by an authorised translator.
• Proof of intended Romanian activity — contracts, lease, or marketplace agreement.
• Bank account details (any EU SEPA account).
• Powers of attorney for any local Romanian representative.

Processing target is 30 days. In practice plan for 8–12 weeks from clean submission to TVA number issuance, with substantial substance queries on e-commerce applicants. ANAF runs an active anti-carousel-fraud verification programme that scrutinises non-resident registrations more intensively than most EU peers.

3.4  The Romanian VAT number

A Romanian TVA registration produces a fiscal identification number (Cod de Identificare Fiscală, CIF) which for TVA purposes is prefixed with RO. Example: RO12345678. The number is also the EU VAT number for VIES purposes. Always validate counterparties through

VIES (ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/vies) on the date of supply and retain a screenshot or saved confirmation in case of audit.

04 · Track 2 — Non-EU vendor selling into Romania

You are established outside the EU — in Tunisia, the United Kingdom, the United States, Switzerland, China, Turkey, the UAE, or anywhere else. Romania is part of the EU’s 27-Member-State harmonised VAT zone. Three architectural choices apply.

4.1  Worked example — Tunis Energy Services SARL

Tunis Energy Services SARL is a Tunisian provider of industrial energy equipment and field services — solar tracking systems, industrial boilers, and on-site commissioning labour — to European industrial buyers. The company sells to:

• Romanian industrial buyers in the Black Sea coastal industrial corridor (B2B, average order value €85,000).
• Smaller Romanian agricultural operators buying photovoltaic kit through a B2C-style direct channel (B2C, average order value €3,500).
• A few EU multi-country accounts with Romanian delivery locations (intra-EU B2B chains).

Their compliance architecture decomposes into three streams:

Stream A — High-value B2B equipment shipments. Each consignment clears Romanian customs in the buyer’s name; the Romanian buyer is importer of record. The buyer pays import TVA at 19% and reclaims it in the next monthly return (cash-flow neutral for TVA-registered buyers). Tunis Energy Services invoices without Romanian TVA, marks the invoice as “export from Tunisia — zero-rated under Tunisian VAT Code Art. 11”, and is not required to register in Romania for this stream. Most commercial buyers prefer DDP terms — in which case Tunis Energy becomes importer of record, must register for Romanian TVA, and the cash-flow advantage of buyer-side import VAT recovery transfers to Tunis Energy as a refund position.

Stream B — Lower-value B2C photovoltaic kit at or below €150 intrinsic value. Two options:

• IOSS registration in any EU Member State. They charge 19% Romanian TVA at checkout, file monthly IOSS returns, and parcels clear EU customs through the IOSS green channel using the IOSS number on the customs declaration. RO e-Factura does not apply to IOSS supplies.
• Default import procedure — each parcel clears with the carrier collecting import TVA from the consumer at delivery. Conversion rates collapse for any meaningful volume.

Stream C — Goods held in a Romanian warehouse or commissioned on-site over multiple months. Tunis Energy maintains a small spare-parts depot in Bucharest for service contracts. The moment Romanian stock exists, IOSS architecture breaks: supplies from Romanian stock are domestic Romanian supplies, not imports. They must register directly for Romanian TVA, charge 19% on Romanian sales, and issue every Romanian invoice through RO e-Factura. On-site labour services with place of supply in Romania trigger TVA registration even without stock.

4.2  The fiscal representative question

Under Romanian Fiscal Code Article 316, non-EU vendors registering for Romanian TVA must appoint a Romanian-resident fiscal representative (reprezentant fiscal) who:

• Files all TVA returns on the foreign vendor’s behalf.
• Issues all Romanian invoices through e-Factura.
• Files SAF-T D406 returns where applicable.
• Files e-Transport notifications for goods movements.
• Holds joint and several liability with the foreign vendor for all Romanian TVA obligations.
• Must be either a Romanian-licensed accountant or a Romanian-resident company specifically authorised by ANAF.

Budget €3,500–€8,500 per year for a competent fiscal representative providing return preparation, e-Factura clearance, e-Transport filings, and routine ANAF correspondence. Aggressive low-cost providers exist; in Romania’s enforcement environment, they are the cause rather than the solution of compliance problems.

4.3  Non-Union OSS for digital services

If Tunis Energy Services also sold digital services to Romanian consumers — for example, a paid online energy-monitoring SaaS dashboard for residential solar installations — those supplies fall under Non-Union OSS. They register in one elected EU Member State, charge 19% Romanian TVA on B2C digital supplies to Romanian consumers, and file a single quarterly Non-Union OSS return. Non-Union OSS supplies are not subject to RO e-Factura.

05 · Track 3 — Higher-value goods, marketplaces, e-Transport, and e-commerce

Romanian e-commerce operates against two operationally distinctive overlays beyond standard TVA: RO e-Factura clearance on every domestic invoice from 2025, and RO e-Transport notification on most cross-border road freight. Foreign and local operators ignore them at the cost of severe penalties.

5.1  Deemed-supplier rules for marketplaces

Article 14a of the EU VAT Directive (transposed into Romanian Fiscal Code Article 270) makes electronic interfaces deemed suppliers for:

• Distance sales of imported goods with intrinsic value ≤ €150 facilitated through the interface.
• Supplies of goods within the EU by non-EU established sellers, regardless of value, where the goods are already inside the EU when the sale is made.

Practical implications for the Romanian market:

• eMAG (the dominant Romanian marketplace, with the largest fulfilment-by-marketplace footprint in the country) operates in-scope marketplace VAT mechanisms covering qualifying transactions. The marketplace transmits e-Factura on supplies where it is the deemed supplier.
• The marketplace’s TVA settlement report becomes the source-of-truth document for your Romanian TVA returns. Reconcile monthly; gaps surface within days under e-Factura cross-matching.
• Master-data hygiene is essential. A misclassified product (e.g. “non-EU seller, EU stock” vs “EU seller, EU stock”) materially shifts the VAT collection responsibility.

5.2  RO e-Transport

RO e-Transport (Sistemul RO e-Transport) is the Romanian electronic notification system for road freight movements of risk goods and high-value consignments. Coverage applies to:

• All cross-border road movements of risk goods (defined commodity list including agricultural products, alcohol, tobacco, fuel, metals, electronics) above defined weight or value thresholds.
• All domestic road movements of risk goods above the relevant thresholds.
• All cross-border road movements of any goods above defined high-value thresholds, regardless of risk classification.

Before the truck moves, the consignor or consignee must obtain an UIT code (Unic Identificator de Transport) through the ANAF e-Transport portal. The UIT is valid for the specific consignment, route, and time window declared. Roadside spot checks by ANAF and Romanian Border Police are routine. Penalties for missing or incorrect UIT codes range from RON 5,000 to RON 100,000 per violation, with cargo subject to confiscation up to the full declared value.

Tunis Energy Services, when shipping a transformer into a Romanian buyer through any haulier, must ensure either it or its Romanian counterparty obtains the UIT code before the truck moves. The Incoterms allocation in the commercial terms determines operational responsibility.

5.3  Domestic reverse charge

Romania applies domestic reverse charge (taxare inversă) under Fiscal Code Article 331 to a defined list of supplies between two Romanian TVA payers, including:

• Cereals and certain agricultural commodities.
• Energy supplies (electricity, natural gas) to traders.
• Emission allowances.
• Scrap metals, recovered materials, certain by-products.
• Mobile phones, integrated circuits, laptops, tablets, and gaming consoles where the tax base on a single invoice exceeds RON 22,500.
• Supplies of buildings or building land where the seller has elected to tax.

For in-scope supplies the supplier issues an invoice with no Romanian TVA, includes the wording “taxare inversă” and the statutory reference, and reports the supply in the TVA return D300 in the dedicated lines. The recipient self-assesses 19% TVA and deducts it in the same return (cash-flow neutral for fully taxable customers).

06 · Track 4 — Local Romanian business — TVA from registration onward

If you operate a Romanian-resident business — a Societate cu Răspundere Limitată (SRL), an authorised individual (PFA), or a Romanian permanent establishment of a foreign group — the operational reality of Romanian TVA in 2026 is shaped by three layers: monthly TVA filing, RO e-Factura on every issued invoice, and SAF-T D406 on a monthly extract basis.

6.1  The RON 300,000 threshold

Romanian-resident businesses with annual turnover below RON 300,000 (approximately €60,000) operate under the special exemption regime — no TVA charged on outputs, no input TVA recoverable, no monthly TVA returns. Once turnover crosses RON 300,000 in any 12-month rolling period, registration is mandatory within 10 days. The business becomes a TVA payer from the first day of the month following registration confirmation.

Voluntary registration below the threshold is available and commonly used by:

• B2B-focused businesses with TVA-registered customers, where charging TVA is invisible to the customer but allows input TVA recovery.
• Businesses making intra-EU acquisitions or exports.
• Start-ups expecting to cross the threshold within months.

6.2  Filing cadence — monthly or quarterly

Default cadence for newly registered TVA payers is monthly. Quarterly filing is available for taxpayers with annual turnover below RON 100,000 and no intra-EU acquisitions. The 25th-of-the-month deadline applies uniformly.

Practical guidance: most businesses with any meaningful import/export or intra-EU activity stay on monthly cadence even where quarterly is available. Quarterly creates a 90-day input TVA recovery lag that is materially expensive at any meaningful refund position.

6.3  RO e-Factura — the operational reality

Since 1 July 2024 every B2B invoice issued by a Romanian-resident TVA payer must be cleared through RO e-Factura, the ANAF e-invoicing platform. Since 1 January 2025 the same applies to B2C invoices. The architecture is:

• Invoicing software generates the invoice in line with Fiscal Code Article 319 content requirements.
• Software serialises the invoice to XML in the RO e-Factura format (CIUS-RO, based on EN 16931).
• XML is transmitted to the ANAF e-Factura API endpoint.
• ANAF returns a unique identifier and either accepts or rejects the invoice (acceptance is automatic in most cases; rejection occurs for structural validation failures).
• The cleared invoice is delivered to the customer either through e-Factura or in any standard format (PDF, EDI) with the e-Factura identifier referenced.

An invoice that has not been transmitted to e-Factura within 5 working days of issuance is not a valid TVA invoice. The customer cannot deduct input TVA on it; the supplier cannot demonstrate compliance with output TVA reporting. Penalties for non-clearance are:

• RON 1,000–10,000 per missed transmission for legal entities.
• RON 500–5,000 for natural persons.
• 15% of the invoice value as a TVA assessment penalty in cases of deliberate non-clearance.

6.4  SAF-T D406 — the monthly extract

SAF-T D406 (Declarația informativă privind situațiile financiare-fiscale) is the Romanian implementation of the OECD Standard Audit File for Tax. Large taxpayers have filed monthly since 1 January 2022; medium taxpayers since 1 January 2023; small taxpayers since 1 January 2025. The file contains a structured monthly extract of:

• General ledger postings.
• Accounts receivable and payable subledgers.
• Inventory movements.
• Fixed asset movements.
• All issued and received invoices with full line-item detail.

D406 is filed by the 25th of the month following the period (aligned with TVA filing). Failures attract penalties of RON 1,000–5,000 per missed return. The structural risk for medium and small taxpayers is that D406 exposes cross-period inconsistencies that were previously buried — for example, year-end accruals that were not properly reversed in opening balances. Plan for a clean-up exercise the first time you switch into D406 cadence.

07 · Cross-track essentials — e-Factura, SAF-T D406, OSS/IOSS, VIES, ViDA

7.1  Invoice content requirements

Romanian TVA invoices must contain — at minimum — the elements set out in Fiscal Code Article 319:

• Supplier full name, address, and CIF (with RO prefix for TVA payers).
• Customer full name, address, and CIF (for B2B).
• Invoice number from a continuous numerical series.
• Date of issue and date of taxable supply.
• Description, quantity, and unit price of goods or services.
• Tax base, rate, and TVA amount, separately for each rate applied.
• Total payable amount in RON, plus foreign currency where billed in EUR or USD with the National Bank of Romania reference exchange rate.
• Reference to the relevant exemption, reverse charge, or simplification (“taxare inversă”, “scutit cu drept de deducere”, etc.).

7.2  OSS, IOSS, and VIES

• Union OSS — for EU-established sellers making B2C cross-border supplies of goods and services within the EU. Quarterly returns. Registered in your home Member State.
• Non-Union OSS — for non-EU-established sellers making B2C supplies of services to EU consumers. Quarterly returns.
• IOSS — for sellers (EU or non-EU) of low-value imported goods ≤ €150 to EU consumers. Monthly returns.
• VIES — the EU VAT number validation system. Used for zero-rating intra-Community B2B supplies. Always validate on date of supply; retain evidence.

7.3  The ViDA timeline — what changes between 2028 and 2030

The VAT in the Digital Age (ViDA) package, adopted by the Council on 11 March 2025, restructures three areas of EU VAT. For Romania, ViDA reinforces a direction Romanian policy has already taken:

• 1 January 2028 — Platform economy: deemed-supplier rules extended to short-term accommodation and passenger transport platforms (Booking.com, Airbnb, Uber, Bolt become VAT collectors for non-VAT-registered providers).
• 1 July 2028 — Single VAT registration: expanded OSS absorbing many transactions that currently require direct TVA registration.
• 1 July 2030 — Mandatory cross-border B2B e-invoicing and DRR: real-time-or-near-real-time transactional reporting for intra-Community supplies. Romania already runs e-Factura domestically; ViDA aligns the cross-border layer.
• 2035 — Full alignment: e-Factura schema will need to align with EN 16931 — substantially already in place via CIUS-RO.

08 · Common questions answered properly

Q. We’re a Bulgarian company selling B2C goods to Romanian consumers — can we use Union OSS?

Yes if you remain above the EU-wide €10,000 distance-selling threshold. Union OSS allows you to register once in Bulgaria, charge 19% Romanian TVA on B2C goods destined for Romanian consumers, and file a single quarterly Union OSS return. RO e-Factura does not apply to OSS supplies. Direct Romanian TVA registration becomes mandatory only if you hold stock in Romania or make supplies out of scope of OSS.

Q. The RON 22,500 reverse-charge threshold on electronics — does that include TVA?

No. The threshold applies to the tax base (the net amount, exclusive of TVA). A laptop sale with a tax base of RON 22,000 plus 19% TVA (RON 4,180) for a total invoice of RON 26,180 is below the threshold and is treated as standard taxable supply. A laptop sale with a tax base of RON 22,500 (total invoice RON 26,775) is at the threshold and triggers domestic reverse charge.

Q. We’re a UK company post-Brexit. How is Romania different from how it was when we were in the EU?

Materially different. As a non-EU company, you no longer benefit from Union OSS for goods supplies — your B2C goods sales above €150 require Romanian TVA registration or an EU-side fiscal arrangement. B2C goods sales ≤ €150 work through IOSS exactly as for any other non-EU vendor. B2B intra-Community acquisitions become full imports with Romanian customs clearance. The €10,000 distance-selling threshold no longer applies to UK sellers — Romanian TVA applies from the first euro for low-value goods via IOSS or from the standard import procedure for higher-value goods.

Q. Our software vendor says they support e-Factura but not e-Transport. Is that a problem?

It depends on your goods profile. If you do not move risk goods or high-value consignments by road into, out of, or within Romania, e-Transport may not apply to you and the gap is not material. If you do — particularly if you import equipment, supply construction materials, or distribute alcohol, tobacco, or fuel — you need an e-Transport solution. Several Romanian e-invoicing providers offer integrated e-Factura + e-Transport gateways; if your primary vendor only supports e-Factura, a secondary e-Transport tool is operationally necessary.

Q. We made an error in last month’s e-Factura transmission. What’s the fix?

Issue a correction invoice (factură de corecție), transmit the correction through e-Factura referencing the original invoice’s identifier, and adjust your monthly TVA return for the period in which the original supply fell. Self-corrected errors transmitted before any ANAF query attract the lowest penalty band. Errors discovered through an ANAF query attract higher penalties — RON 1,000–10,000 per invoice.

Q. Is Romania in the Eurozone? What currency should we invoice in?

Romania is an EU Member State but not in the Eurozone. The Romanian leu (RON) is the legal currency. You may invoice in EUR (or any other foreign currency) for cross-border supplies, but the TVA amount on the invoice and in your TVA return must be in RON using the Banca Națională a României (BNR) reference exchange rate of the date of taxable supply. BNR publishes daily reference rates that are the legally required conversion source.

Q. Do we need a Romanian bank account?

Not legally — TVA payments can be made from any EU SEPA bank account and refunds can be paid to any nominated account. Practically, a Romanian RON account simplifies dealing with Romanian B2B customers who routinely pay in RON and incur conversion costs on cross-border SEPA. Most active fiscal representatives recommend opening a RON account once trading volumes justify the administrative overhead.

Q. We registered for Romanian TVA but our first refund is being held. What’s happening?

Romanian first-refund verification is rigorous. ANAF systematically opens substance verifications on non-resident first-refund claims, particularly above RON 50,000. Expect 90–180 days from filing to refund payment. The Fiscal Code provides for interest at the BNR reference rate plus a margin if ANAF exceeds statutory deadlines; the deadline runs from completion of any audit. Document substance heavily — lease agreements, supplier and customer contracts, evidence of operational activity in Romania — and submit it proactively with the refund claim rather than waiting for the audit to request it.

09 · Recent changes and the road to ViDA

2022 — RO e-Factura B2G and SAF-T D406 launch

On 1 July 2022, RO e-Factura became mandatory for B2G transactions. The same year, SAF-T D406 became mandatory for large taxpayers (1 January 2022) — Romania becoming one of the first EU Member States to operate SAF-T monthly rather than on-audit-request.

2023 — SAF-T expansion to medium taxpayers

From 1 January 2023, medium-sized taxpayers entered SAF-T D406 monthly reporting. Late 2023 amendments to the Fiscal Code defined the e-Factura B2B mandate that would take effect from 2024.

2024 — RO e-Factura B2B and e-Transport tightening

From 1 January 2024, all B2B invoices became reportable through e-Factura. From 1 July 2024, full clearance — not just reporting — became mandatory. RO e-Transport thresholds were tightened and enforcement intensified through 2024.

2025 — RO e-Factura B2C and SAF-T expansion to small taxpayers

From 1 January 2025, B2C invoices became subject to e-Factura clearance. Small taxpayers entered SAF-T D406 monthly cycle. The combined effect: every TVA-registered business in Romania, regardless of size, operates in real-time data submission to ANAF as the default state.

2026 — Enforcement intensification

ANAF expanded analytical and cross-matching capacity through 2026. Expect more structured queries, shorter response windows, and tighter joint enforcement between TVA, e-Factura, e-Transport, and SAF-T data streams. The architectural rules have not changed; the enforcement intensity has.

2028–2030 — ViDA milestones

Romania will adopt the ViDA package on the EU-mandated timeline. Because e-Factura is already in place, the operational change is incremental rather than transformative. The Single VAT Registration phase from 1 July 2028 is particularly relevant for foreign vendors currently maintaining direct Romanian TVA registrations — many will become unnecessary as expanded OSS absorbs more transaction types.

10 · Primary sources & official references

Every fact in this guide is sourced. We list the primary references below. Where law changes between publication and your transaction date, the primary source governs.

• ANAF — Agenția Națională de Administrare Fiscală
• Spațiul Privat Virtual (SPV) — taxpayer portal
• RO e-Factura — ANAF portal
• RO e-Transport — ANAF portal
• SAF-T D406 — ANAF guidance
• Romanian Fiscal Code (Legea 227/2015)
• Banca Națională a României — daily reference exchange rates
• VIES VAT number validation
• EU VAT Directive 2006/112/EC (consolidated)
• ViDA package — Council adoption 11 March 2025
• EN 16931 European e-invoicing standard
• Peppol BIS Billing 3.0
• EU Commission — One-Stop Shop (OSS)

Disclaimer & methodology

This guide was prepared by TaxDo’s editorial team in collaboration with practising Romanian TVA advisors. Every numerical threshold, statutory citation, and procedural detail was verified against the primary sources listed in section 10 on the date of publication (27 May 2026). Tax law changes. ANAF issues binding interpretations and the Romanian Ministry of Finance publishes Government Ordinances that can modify operational detail without changing the underlying statute. Always confirm the position applicable to your specific transaction with a Romanian-licensed expert contabil or fiscal consultant, or directly with ANAF. This guide is general information, not advice on any specific transaction. TaxDo accepts no liability for reliance on this guide in lieu of jurisdiction-specific professional advice.