🧾 Compliance & accounting

Hiring Employees in Romania: Payroll Basics

For a foreign-owned SRL, payroll often starts for a practical reason: keeping the 1% micro-company regime requires at least one employee. So even before you have a team, hiring employees in Romania is something most founders deal with early — frequently by employing themselves.

Register the contract in REGES first

Romania runs an online employee register called REGES (the general register of employees). The key rule for foreigners: the employment contract must be registered in REGES before the employee’s first working day — not after. Skipping or delaying this exposes the company to penalties.

A standard individual employment contract sets out the role, working hours, and gross salary, and is the basis for everything that follows. Because the deadline is tied to the start date, founders abroad should plan the paperwork in advance and have an accountant ready to submit it — the registration itself is quick, but it cannot be backdated.

The gross-to-net model

Romanian salaries are quoted gross. As the employer, your SRL:

• withholds the employee’s income tax and social contributions from the gross salary;
• pays the employer’s contributions on top;
• transfers the net amount to the employee.

So the company handles the full gross-to-net calculation and remits the taxes — the employee just receives net pay.

Monthly payroll declarations to ANAF

Each month the company files a payroll declaration with ANAF (the tax authority), reporting wages, withheld tax, and contributions, and pays the amounts due. This is a recurring obligation for every active employee, which is why payroll is usually handled by your accountant rather than in-house.

The minimum wage

Romania has a national minimum gross wage set by the government. It is reviewed and changed periodically, so any contract must respect the current minimum. We won’t quote a figure here — confirm the rate in force when you hire.

Satisfying the micro-company employee rule

To keep the 1% micro tax, an SRL needs at least one employee (or an equivalent arrangement). Common options for a small, foreign-owned company:

• employ a director/administrator on an employment contract;
• use a part-time contract to meet the requirement at lower cost.

Many small SRLs simply put the founder on payroll. Get the structure wrong and the company can lose micro status and fall under the 16% profit tax instead.

2026 figures and rules. The national minimum wage and contribution rates change every year, and the micro-company conditions have shifted repeatedly. Treat the rates above as indicative and confirm the current numbers before you hire.

Get payroll set up correctly

Our partner accountants register contracts in REGES, run gross-to-net payroll, and file the monthly ANAF declarations — including the single hire that keeps your micro-company status intact.

Ready to start? Talk to us about accounting and payroll.