Cryptocurrency tax Romania: how gains are taxed and declared

What is actually taxed

Romanian tax attaches to the gain from a transfer, not to the value of a portfolio. An individual who buys and holds crypto has nothing to declare. The moment a position is disposed of — sold for fiat, exchanged for another crypto-asset, or used to pay for something — a gain or a loss is realised, and that is what enters the calculation.

The gain is computed per transaction: the amount received, less the acquisition cost of what was transferred, less the direct costs of the transaction. Under article 114 paragraph (2) letter m) of the Fiscal Code the result is income from other sources, and the rate depends on when the gain was realised, not on when it is declared:

A disposal made in December 2025 and declared in 2026 is therefore taxed at 10%; a disposal made in January 2026 and declared in 2027 is taxed at 16%. Where the amounts are significant, that boundary is worth documenting as part of a proper tax advisory review rather than settled from a forum post.

The Fiscal Code also exempts small gains. Under article 116 paragraph (2^1), a gain below RON 200 per transaction is not taxable, provided total gains for the fiscal year do not exceed RON 600. The second figure matters most: once the annual limit is exceeded, the per-transaction exemption no longer shelters the year, and every transaction is computed.

A worked example

An individual buys 0.5 BTC in 2024 for RON 90,000, including the purchase fee, and sells the whole position in March 2026 for RON 150,000, paying RON 600 in exchange fees on the sale.

• Gain: 150,000 − 90,000 − 600 = RON 59,400
• The gain is above RON 200 and the year’s total is above RON 600, so no exemption applies
• Tax at 16%: RON 9,504, declared in the single tax return for 2026 and paid by the term set for that year

The same disposal made in December 2025 would have been taxed at 10% — RON 5,940. Nothing about the asset, the platform or the paperwork changes; only the date of the disposal does.

Which events create a taxable gain

The pattern that costs people money is assuming that only a conversion to lei or euro counts.

• Selling crypto for fiat — a transfer, and the clearest case.
• Exchanging one crypto-asset for another — also a disposal of the asset given up, valued at the moment of the exchange.
• Paying for goods or services in crypto — a disposal at the value used in the payment.
• Buying and holding — not a taxable event.
• Moving assets between your own wallets — not a disposal, but it has to be documented, or it looks like one.

Mining, staking rewards, airdrops and similar receipts do not fit the “transfer of virtual currency” pattern and are not automatically covered by the same rule. Depending on the facts, they can be another category of income, and a sustained, organised activity can be an independent activity with its own regime. This is the area with the least settled practice, so it is the area where a written position is worth having before the return is filed rather than after a question is asked.

Declaring: the single tax return

Individuals report crypto gains in the single tax return filed for the previous year. The return computes the income tax and, where the thresholds are reached, the health insurance contribution. It is self-assessed: the taxpayer calculates the amounts, files, and pays.

The filing term is set for each year and has moved more than once, so confirm it against the calendar published by ANAF for the year concerned instead of relying on last year’s date. The Romanian tax calendar collects the recurring deadlines.

Two mechanical points cause most of the errors. Everything is converted to lei, using the exchange rate rules applicable to the transaction date — a portfolio tracked in euro or dollars still has to be restated. And losses do not simply disappear: how they may be set against gains is defined by the Fiscal Code for the income category concerned, so it is a rule to check rather than an assumption to make.

The health contribution

Crypto gains do not sit outside the contribution system. They count towards the annual base of non-salary income used for the health insurance contribution, together with dividends, interest, rent and income from independent activities.

Under article 170 paragraph (2) of the Fiscal Code the contribution becomes due once that combined total is at least equal to a threshold expressed as a multiple of the gross minimum wage — income landing exactly on a threshold is inside it, not outside — and the base is then fixed by the threshold reached rather than by the actual amount of the gain. The number of thresholds and their levels have changed several times in recent years, which produces two practical consequences. First, the contribution is a step function: a small additional gain can trigger a materially larger contribution by crossing a threshold. Second, the calculation has to be done on total non-salary income — an individual with dividends and rent may owe the contribution because of crypto gains that would not have triggered it alone.

Confirm the thresholds in force for the year being declared. Applying last year’s structure is the most common error we see in this part of the return.

The records that make the return possible

Romanian tax is document-driven, and a crypto file is reconstructed from records or not at all. What has to exist, per transaction:

• date and time, and the platform or wallet involved;
• the asset and quantity, in and out;
• the price in the currency of the transaction, and the rate applied to convert to lei;
• fees and commissions, which reduce the gain;
• for transfers between your own wallets, evidence that no disposal occurred;
• for anything acquired years ago, evidence of the acquisition cost — without it, the whole proceeds risk being treated as gain.

Exchange exports are a starting point, not a file: platforms close, formats change, and an export produced three years later may not reconcile with what was declared. Keep the exports as they are produced, each year, and keep a consolidated ledger alongside them.

Companies holding crypto

The individual rules do not apply to a company. A Romanian company that holds or trades crypto records the movements in its accounts, and the result flows into the ordinary tax computation: 16% corporate income tax on the taxable profit, or, for a company on the micro-enterprise regime, 1% on revenue from 2026, which changes the arithmetic completely. Deciding which regime a crypto-trading company should be in is a calculation, not a preference — the comparison is in the guide on the micro-enterprise regime versus corporate tax.

Crypto is not currency for accounting purposes. The classification and valuation policy — how the holding is presented, how it is measured at the reporting date, how a disposal is recognised — has to be set deliberately and applied consistently, because it drives both the financial statements and the tax result. On the VAT side, the Court of Justice of the European Union held in Hedqvist (C-264/14) that exchanging traditional currency for units of a virtual currency is an exempt financial transaction; that does not settle the treatment of every crypto-related service, and each activity needs its own analysis.

Why undeclared history is getting harder to keep

The EU framework extending automatic exchange of information to crypto-asset service providers, known as DAC8, was transposed into the Fiscal Procedure Code by GEO 71/2025, published in the Official Gazette 1146 of 10 December 2025. 2026 is the first reporting year, with the first reports transmitted to ANAF in 2027; providers that fail to comply face fines of RON 20,000 to 150,000.

In practice this means platforms report account holders — name, address, residence, tax identification number, date and place of birth — and transaction values to a tax administration, which then exchanges the data with the administration where the holder is resident. Romanian residents holding assets on foreign platforms should assume the information will arrive.

That changes the calculation on historical positions. A voluntary correction, filed before any request from the authorities, is treated very differently from an amount found during a check: the difference shows up in the accessories and in how the file is handled. Correcting several years at once is unpleasant. Being asked about them first is worse.

What to do before you file

1. Rebuild the transaction history from the platform exports, per year, and reconcile it to your own record.
2. Compute gains per transaction, in lei, with fees and acquisition cost applied.
3. Apply the rate for the year of the disposal — 16% from 2026, 10% up to 2025 — and test the RON 200 and RON 600 exemption limits on the year as a whole.
4. Add up all non-salary income to see which contribution threshold is reached — crypto is one input, not the whole calculation.
5. Take a written position on anything that is not a plain buy-and-sell: staking, mining, airdrops, forks, activity that looks organised and continuous.
6. File and pay by the term set for that year, and keep the supporting file for as long as the tax record can be verified.