📊 Tax

Salary vs Dividends in a Romanian SRL (2026): Which Actually Costs Less

If you own a Romanian SRL and want to pay yourself, the arithmetic in 2026 is blunt: for a micro-company, about 79 lei out of every 100 lei of company money reaches you as a dividend, versus about 57 lei as salary. Dividends win, and they win by a wide margin. But you cannot skip salary entirely — the micro regime requires at least one employee — so the real question is not whether to take a salary, but how small it can be. Here is the full calculation, and the parts of it that change when you are a non-resident.

The two routes, and the constraint you don’t choose

Money leaves a Romanian SRL to its owner in essentially two legal ways:

• Salary (or a paid administrator mandate): a deductible cost for the company, taxed heavily at the individual level.
• Dividends: paid out of accounting profit, taxed lightly at the individual level, but not deductible for the company.

The constraint: an SRL taxed under the micro regime (1% of turnover) must have at least one full-time employee. Since 1 July 2026 the minimum gross wage is 4,325 RON (Government Decision 146/2026), which puts the employer’s total cost of that mandatory position at roughly 4,418 RON per month, or about 53,000 RON per year. If you are the only person in the company, that salary is you — so the comparison below is about the money above that floor.

What a salary costs in 2026

Romanian payroll taxes have not changed in 2026: CAS 25% (pension) and CASS 10% (health) are withheld from gross, income tax is 10% on what remains, and the employer adds CAM 2.25% on top.

Take 100,000 RON of company money allocated to employment cost:

Step	Amount
Total employer cost	100,000 RON
Gross salary (cost ÷ 1.0225)	~97,800 RON
CAM 2.25% (employer)	~2,200 RON
CAS 25%	~24,450 RON
CASS 10%	~9,780 RON
Income tax 10% on the remainder	~6,357 RON
Net in your pocket	~57,200 RON

That is a combined burden of roughly 43% — and note there is no personal deduction at this income level, since the deduction only applies near the minimum wage.

What dividends cost in 2026

Two rates stack, at two different levels:

1. Company level. Under the micro regime you already paid 1% of turnover — that tax is charged on revenue, so a salary would not have reduced it either. Under the profit-tax regime you pay 16% of profit first.
2. Individual level. Since 1 January 2026, dividends are taxed at 16%, withheld at source by the company (up from 10% under Law 141/2025). On top of that, an individual may owe CASS at 10%, but only against fixed thresholds — never on the full amount.

For 2026 the CASS thresholds are anchored to the minimum wage in force on 1 January 2026 (4,050 RON), and the mid-year increase to 4,325 RON does not move them:

Total non-salary income received in 2026	CASS due
under 24,300 RON	0 RON
24,300 – 48,599 RON	2,430 RON
48,600 – 97,199 RON	4,860 RON
97,200 RON and above	9,720 RON

The cap matters: 9,720 RON is the maximum, whether you receive 100,000 or 2,000,000 RON. See dividends from a Romanian SRL for the distribution mechanics and deadlines.

Worked comparison: 100,000 RON out of a micro-company

Same starting point — 100,000 RON of company money — routed two ways.

Route A — salary: ~57,200 RON reaches you (calculated above).

Route B — dividend:

• Gross dividend: 100,000 RON
• Dividend tax 16% withheld by the company: 16,000 RON
• Received: 84,000 RON → falls in the 48,600–97,199 band → CASS 4,860 RON
• Net in your pocket: ~79,140 RON

Difference: about 21,900 RON per 100,000 RON extracted, in favour of dividends. Under the micro regime this is nearly always the right answer, because salary is not deductible against a tax charged on turnover — you pay the payroll burden and get no company-level relief for it. Run your own figures in the dividend tax calculator.

The same comparison under profit tax — the gap narrows

If your SRL is on the 16% profit tax, salary becomes a deductible expense and the picture changes. Start from 100,000 RON of pre-tax profit:

• Salary route: the whole 100,000 RON is deductible, so no profit tax is due on it. Gross ~97,800 RON, net to you ~57,200 RON (57.2%).
• Dividend route: profit tax 16% = 16,000 RON, leaving 84,000 RON distributable. Dividend tax 16% = 13,440 RON, leaving 70,560 RON. CASS on 70,560 RON = 4,860 RON. Net to you ~65,700 RON (65.7%).

Dividends still win, but by roughly 8,500 RON instead of 21,900 RON. And that is before you count what the salary buys: pension entitlement, health cover and a documented employment relationship. If you are deciding between the two company regimes as well, start with micro-company vs profit tax.

What changes if you are a non-resident

Three things behave differently for a foreign owner, and each one is worth checking before the first distribution.

1. CASS is not automatic. The 10% health contribution applies to individuals subject to Romanian social security legislation. A shareholder who lives and is insured in another EU/EEA state or Switzerland, and can evidence it (typically an A1 certificate), is generally outside the Romanian system for this purpose. Non-EU residents depend on whether a social security agreement applies. This is a residence-and-coordination question, not a dividend question — confirm your own position rather than assuming either outcome.

2. Withholding may be lower than 16% — or higher in practice if you miss a document. Romania’s domestic rate on dividends paid abroad is 16%, but a double tax treaty with your country of residence may cap it lower. The reduced rate applies only if you hand the company a valid certificate of fiscal residence before payment; without it the company must withhold at the domestic rate. Rates vary by treaty, so check the specific convention rather than a generic figure.

3. The EU parent-subsidiary exemption probably will not help a micro-company. Article 229 of the Fiscal Code exempts dividends paid to a company resident in another EU member state that has held at least 10% of the Romanian company’s capital for an uninterrupted period of at least one year. But one of the cumulative conditions is that the Romanian payer is subject to profit tax without option or exemption — which in practice excludes SRLs taxed under the micro regime. If your holding structure was built around this exemption, verify the company’s tax regime first.

The company also files form 207, the informative return for income paid to non-residents, in addition to the monthly form 100 for the withheld tax.

How to structure it in practice

Your situation	Sensible split
Micro-company, solo owner	Minimum-wage salary (regime condition) + dividends for the rest
Profit tax, high personal costs in Romania	Larger salary — it is deductible and builds entitlements
Non-resident owner, no Romanian presence	Minimum salary for the employee condition + dividends, treaty rate applied
You need proof of income for a mortgage or visa	Salary, despite the cost — dividends are harder to evidence

Two practical warnings. First, transfers to yourself without a general meeting resolution are not dividends: at best a shareholder loan, at worst reclassified on inspection as employment income with full contributions and penalties. Second, dividend timing controls the CASS band — the thresholds are tested on amounts received in a calendar year, so a distribution split across 31 December and January can land in two lower bands.

Key takeaways

• Under the micro regime, dividends deliver about 79,000 RON per 100,000 RON of company money versus about 57,000 RON as salary.
• Under profit tax, salary is deductible, so the gap narrows to roughly 8,500 RON per 100,000 RON.
• The micro regime forces at least one minimum-wage salary — about 53,000 RON/year in employer cost from 1 July 2026.
• CASS is capped at 9,720 RON in 2026, on thresholds still anchored to the 4,050 RON minimum wage.
• Non-residents: confirm CASS applicability, obtain a certificate of fiscal residence before payment, and do not assume the EU exemption applies to a micro-company.

Frequently asked questions

Can I pay myself nothing at all? Not if you want the micro regime — it requires an employee. On profit tax there is no such requirement, but an administrator with no remuneration at all invites questions about substance.

Is an administrator mandate contract cheaper than an employment contract? Not materially — remuneration under a mandate is treated as salary-assimilated income and carries the same contributions.

Do I pay Romanian tax and tax at home? Dividends may also be taxable in your country of residence; the applicable treaty determines relief, usually a credit for the Romanian tax withheld. Confirm with an adviser where you live.

When is the dividend tax due? By the 25th of the month following the month you are paid; if dividends are declared but unpaid by 31 December, the tax is due by 25 January. See hiring and payroll obligations for the salary-side deadlines.

Get the split right from day one

We set up the regime, the payroll and the distribution paperwork together, so the structure fits how you actually want to be paid. See company formation in Romania or, if you are abroad, opening a company as a non-resident. Start here.