📊 Tax

Romania's 3% Tax Bonification for 2025: What Owners of a Romanian SRL Should Check Now

If your Romanian company filed every return it owed and paid its 2025 tax in full and on time, Romania owes it 3% of that tax back. You do not apply for it. Order of the Minister of Finance no. 987 of 3 August 2026, published in the Official Gazette no. 678 of 17 August 2026, approves the procedure under which ANAF checks the conditions on its own initiative and issues the granting decisions itself.

The legal basis is article 7 of Emergency Ordinance no. 8/2026, the February 2026 fiscal package. This is the second edition of the measure: for fiscal year 2024, the Ministry of Finance reported roughly 269 million lei in bonifications granted to companies.

For a foreign owner, the practical value of knowing this is narrow but real — it explains a credit appearing against your company’s tax account that has no invoice behind it, and it puts a price on being one day late with a payment.

Which companies qualify

The bonification covers fiscal year 2025 (or a modified fiscal year starting in 2025) and applies to:

• corporate income tax payers, under any declaration and payment system;
• micro-company income tax payers.

If your company switched between the two regimes during 2025 — which many did, given the threshold changes — both taxes go into the calculation. The difference between the two regimes is covered in micro-company vs. profit tax in Romania.

The three conditions, and where companies lose it

The conditions are cumulative. Missing one cancels the whole thing:

1. All tax returns filed, in line with the company’s fiscal vector — including obligations that were established by a tax authority decision rather than self-declared.
2. The 2025 corporate or micro-company tax paid in full and by the legal deadlines. Not “eventually paid”. Paid on time.
3. No other outstanding tax obligations and no budgetary claims individualised in enforceable titles, at the deadlines set by law.

Condition three is where most companies fall out, because it is not limited to the tax the bonification is calculated on. An unpaid fine, a contributions difference from an audit, an obligation to a different budget — any of these counts as arrears and removes the company from the calculation even if the main tax was paid perfectly.

Condition two is the second trap, and it matters more for foreign-owned companies than for local ones. Payments initiated from a foreign account, or funded by a shareholder transfer that arrives a day late, are settled when they reach the Treasury — not when you sent them. A quarterly micro-tax payment that lands on the 26th instead of the 25th is a late payment.

What the 3% is calculated on

Not on turnover, and not on profit — on the tax itself:

• corporate income tax payers: 3% of the annual corporate income tax declared, minus amounts redirected under the law (sponsorships, private scholarships and the other permitted redirections);
• micro-companies: 3% of the sum of the micro-company income taxes for all four quarters of the fiscal year;
• companies that changed regime during 2025: 3% of the two taxes combined;
• for taxpayers that owed the minimum turnover tax, that amount is the base.

Two worked examples:

Micro-company. Declared a combined 12,400 lei of micro-company tax across the four quarters of 2025. Bonification: 12,400 × 3% = 372 lei.

Corporate income tax payer. Declared 260,000 lei of annual corporate income tax for 2025 and redirected 15,000 lei to a non-profit. The base is 245,000 lei, so the bonification is 245,000 × 3% = 7,350 lei.

These are not large numbers on a small company. They are, however, granted automatically for behaviour you should have anyway — and the arithmetic scales with the tax bill.

Why the procedure arrives in August

The bonification is determined only after the deadline for the annual return has passed, because that is when the tax due becomes final:

• for micro-companies, after the Q4 return deadline, 25 January 2026;
• for corporate income tax payers, after the D101 annual corporate tax return deadline for 2025, which was 25 June 2026.

Hence the sequence: annual returns first, procedure published in August, decisions after that.

It is not a refund

This is the part that surprises owners who expect money to move. The bonification is not paid out. It is used to offset the company’s tax obligations under the set-off rules in the Fiscal Procedure Code. An actual refund happens only in the cases the law provides, where the amount cannot be offset.

In practice, you see it as a smaller current liability, not as a bank transfer. The order also sets out decision templates for granting, amending and cancelling the bonification, including adjustments after amended returns or after differences established in a tax audit. So a corrective return filed later, or an audit that changes the 2025 tax, can reduce or cancel a bonification already granted.

What to do in the next few weeks

• Check the company’s SPV account. The granting decision is communicated electronically through Romania’s virtual private space, not by post. If your accountant holds the digital certificate, ask them to look.
• Reconcile the tax account statement. Any residual balance — even a few lei from a misallocated payment — is worth investigating now rather than after a decision has been issued without you.
• Do not pay anyone to “claim” it. There is no application form and no request procedure. Any service charging a fee to obtain the bonification on your behalf is selling a process that does not exist.
• Do not assume it repeats. The measure was enacted separately for 2024 and for 2025, through different normative acts. Whether fiscal year 2026 gets the same treatment will depend on a new text.

The controllable part is condition two. Paying on the deadline rather than after it is the single habit that keeps a company inside the measure — and it is the same habit that keeps it out of the late-payment interest of 0.02% per day. If you are not sure your company’s Romanian filing calendar is being met, start with the Romanian tax deadlines guide and the post-formation compliance checklist.

Key points

• OMF no. 987/2026 (Official Gazette no. 678 of 17.08.2026) approves the procedure for the 3% bonification for fiscal year 2025, under article 7 of OUG no. 8/2026.
• It is granted ex officio — no application, no supporting documents.
• Three cumulative conditions: all returns filed, the 2025 tax paid in full and on time, and no other arrears.
• The base is 3% of the annual corporate income tax (less redirected amounts) or of the four quarterly micro-company taxes.
• The amount is offset against other tax obligations; it does not arrive as a payment into the company’s account.