📊 Tax

Selling to EU Consumers From a Romanian Company: the €10,000 Threshold and the OSS Return

Most people who set up a Romanian SRL for e-commerce or SaaS hit the same surprise in month four: the Romanian VAT rules they researched stop applying once cross-border consumer sales pass a very small number. That number is €10,000 a year — about 46,337 lei — for the whole European Union combined, not per country.

Below it, you charge Romanian VAT (or none, if you are not VAT-registered). Above it, every sale to a consumer in another member state carries that country’s VAT rate. The One Stop Shop (OSS) exists so you can collect all of it through a single Romanian registration and a single quarterly return, instead of registering in each destination country.

What actually counts toward the €10,000

The threshold covers two kinds of supply, added together:

• intra-EU distance sales of goods — physical goods shipped from Romania to a private customer in another member state;
• telecommunications, broadcasting and electronically supplied (TBE) services to private customers in other member states — hosting, SaaS subscriptions, digital downloads, online courses delivered automatically.

What does not count: domestic Romanian sales, B2B sales to VAT-registered businesses in other member states (those are reverse-charged and need an intra-EU VAT number), and exports outside the EU.

The threshold is cumulative across all member states and calendar-year based. Three thousand euro to Germany, four to France and four to Italy is €11,000 — you are over.

The trap for micro-companies that are not VAT-registered

Romania’s domestic VAT registration threshold is 395,000 lei of turnover. The distance-selling threshold is 46,337 lei of cross-border consumer sales. These are two different rules and the small one bites first.

A Romanian micro-company invoicing €40,000 a year, of which €15,000 goes to consumers across the EU, is comfortably below the domestic registration threshold and still obliged to charge destination VAT on that €15,000. In practice, ANAF’s OSS registration requires a normal Romanian VAT identification number, so companies in this position generally have to either register for VAT in Romania and use OSS, or register for VAT in each destination country. Confirm your own position with ANAF before you build a pricing model on it.

When destination VAT starts

Not at the end of the year. From the transaction that crosses the threshold, and for the whole of the following calendar year.

You may also opt in voluntarily while still below €10,000 — useful when you sell mostly into countries with rates lower than Romania’s 21%. The option binds you for at least two calendar years, so it is a pricing decision, not a filing preference.

Worked example

A Romanian SRL sells accessories online. Cross-border consumer sales pass €10,000 in March 2026. From that sale onward it charges destination VAT and, for the rest of the year, records €50,000 of gross cross-border sales:

Destination	Gross sales	VAT rate	VAT due
Germany	€30,000	19%	€4,789.92
France	€12,500	20%	€2,083.33
Netherlands	€7,500	21%	€1,301.65
Total	€50,000	—	€8,174.90

All of it goes into one Romanian OSS return, is paid once in euro to ANAF, and is distributed by ANAF to the three tax administrations. No German, French or Dutch VAT registration is required.

Note what this implies for pricing: at the same shelf price, your margin differs by country. Rates change — check the destination rate before each campaign.

Registering in Romania

Registration is done electronically through ANAF’s dedicated OSS portal by filing a declaration of commencement of activity under the special scheme.

The timing rule is worth reading twice: registration normally takes effect from the first day of the calendar quarter following the request. If your first supply under the scheme happens before that date, the scheme can apply from that first supply — but only if you inform the member state of identification by the 10th day of the month following that first supply. Miss that window and the sales in between fall outside OSS, which means registering in the destination country to fix them.

The D398 return — and the deadline that does not move

Under the Union scheme you file the special VAT return, form 398, quarterly, by the end of the month following the quarter. For a Romanian company:

Quarter	Deadline
Q1	30 April
Q2	31 July
Q3	31 October
Q4	31 January

Here is the detail that catches even experienced accountants: the OSS deadline is not extended when it falls on a weekend or a public holiday. The European Commission states this explicitly. Romanian domestic deadlines roll to the next working day; this one does not. 31 October 2026 is a Saturday, and it is still the deadline for the third quarter.

Three more rules:

• the return is filed even if there were no sales in the quarter — a nil return is mandatory;
• the return is drawn up in euro, converting other currencies at the European Central Bank rate for the last day of the reporting period (or the next published day);
• payment is due by the same deadline and must quote the return’s unique reference number, otherwise it is not matched to your return.

Records supporting OSS supplies must be kept for 10 years, available electronically to any member state of consumption on request.

What OSS does not do

• It does not recover input VAT. VAT you paid in another member state is not deducted in the OSS return. It is reclaimed separately through the EU refund procedure — in Romania, form 318, with an annual deadline of 30 September for the previous year.
• It does not cover B2B. Business customers with a valid VAT number are reverse-charged and reported in the domestic VAT return and the recapitulative statement.
• It does not cover domestic sales. Romanian consumers stay in your ordinary Romanian VAT return at 21% or 11% — see VAT in Romania in 2026.
• It does not replace goods imported from outside the EU in consignments up to €150 — that is the separate import scheme (IOSS), filed monthly.

Key takeaways

• One EU-wide €10,000 (≈46,337 lei) threshold covers distance sales of goods and TBE services combined.
• Above it, destination VAT applies from the crossing transaction, and OSS lets you settle it through one Romanian registration.
• The domestic 395,000 lei VAT threshold is a different rule — being under it does not exempt you from destination VAT.
• Form 398, quarterly, by the end of the following month, in euro, nil returns included — and the deadline does not move for weekends or holidays.
• OSS collects output VAT only; input VAT paid abroad comes back through the form 318 refund procedure.

Get the VAT model right before the first campaign

The expensive version of this is discovering in year two that you undercharged VAT in four countries and owe the difference yourself. We set up and run Romanian companies built for cross-border selling — see a Romanian SRL for IT and e-commerce and our accounting services, or read micro-company vs profit tax first. Start here.