The rule sits in a law most guides do not open
Search for the e-Factura obligations of a foreign company and you will find two answers. One says non-residents are outside the system, because article 10 of GEO 120/2021 speaks only of persons established in Romania. The other says everyone with a Romanian VAT number issues e-invoices. Both are wrong, and for the same reason: the rule for non-established companies was never written into the e-invoicing ordinance.
It is in Law 296/2023, article LIX paragraph (3). Taxable persons not established in Romania but registered for VAT here, for supplies of goods and services that have their place of supply in Romania under articles 275 and 278–279 of the Tax Code, made in a B2B relationship, “have the obligation, starting with 1 January 2024, to transmit the invoices issued” in RO e-Factura, whether or not the recipient is in the e-Factura register. Paragraphs (1) and (2) of the same article, for companies established in Romania, applied only until 30 June 2024, when mandatory issuing under article 10 took over. Paragraph (3) has no end date.
Paragraph (5) adds the second half: the supplier still has to send the invoice to the customer under article 319 of the Tax Code. So the non-resident runs two things in parallel. Its own invoice, issued under its ordinary rules, goes to the customer. A structured XML copy goes to ANAF. That is reporting, not e-invoicing in the full sense.
What is inside the obligation and what is not
| Invoice issued by the non-established, VAT-registered company | RO e-Factura |
|---|---|
| B2B supply of goods located in Romania (stock in a Romanian warehouse sold to a Romanian company) | Reported |
| B2B service with the place of supply in Romania, invoiced under Romanian rules | Reported |
| Sale to a private individual (B2C), including online sales to consumers | Not reported |
| Export or intra-Community supply of goods leaving Romania, exempt under article 294 | Not reported (paragraph (4)(a)) |
| Supply to a customer neither established nor registered for VAT in Romania | Not reported (paragraph (4)(b)) |
| Simplified invoice | Not reported (paragraph (4)(c)) |
| Service whose invoicing follows another member state’s rules, article 319(5) | Not reported (paragraph (4)(d)) |
Two lines deserve a comment. A company that ships part of its Romanian stock to customers in Hungary or Bulgaria makes intra-Community supplies from Romania; those invoices appear in the VAT return and in the EC sales list, but not in e-Factura. And a marketplace seller whose customers are consumers has almost nothing to report, while the same seller invoicing a Romanian retailer or the platform itself reports every one of those invoices.
The five working days, on a calendar
Paragraph (6) gives five working days from the date of the invoice, and no later than five working days from the legal deadline for issuing it. For non-established companies the term has been in working days from the start. The change of 1 January 2026, from calendar to working days, concerned article 10(7) of GEO 120/2021, which applies to companies established in Romania.
A worked example. A Polish distributor with stock in a warehouse near Bucharest sells goods worth RON 84,000 plus 21% VAT (RON 17,640) to a Romanian retail chain and issues the invoice on Thursday, 10 September 2026. The count starts the next day: 11, 14, 15, 16 and 17 September. The XML has to be in the system by Thursday, 17 September.
The second limb matters when invoicing lags. Goods are delivered on 28 August and nobody issues the invoice. The legal deadline for issuing it is the 15th of the following month, Tuesday 15 September. Five working days later is 22 September. An invoice dated 25 September and uploaded the same day is already late, even though it went up on the day it was issued.
The working days are Romanian ones. The head office calendar does not count: 30 November and 1 December are public holidays in Romania and working days in Warsaw, Vienna or Milan.
What changed on 1 January 2026: your purchase invoices
Until the end of 2025, a Romanian supplier selling to a non-established company had no duty to pass that invoice through RO e-Factura, because article 10(1) covers only transactions between two persons established in Romania. The non-resident’s purchase invoices arrived by email, and the Romanian VAT return was built from PDFs.
GEO 89/2025 (Official Gazette 1203 of 24 December 2025) closed the gap. The new article 10(1^1) of GEO 120/2021 obliges persons established in Romania to transmit through the system the invoices for supplies with the place in Romania made “to taxable persons not established, but registered for VAT purposes in Romania”. Receipts from cash registers that qualify as simplified invoices are excepted, and so are intra-Community supplies where the customer gives a VAT number from another member state. Paragraph (1^2) keeps the ordinary channel alive: the supplier also sends the invoice to the customer under article 319.
For a foreign finance team this has three practical effects:
- Rent for the warehouse, fulfilment fees, local transport, the Romanian accountant’s fee: all of these invoices now exist in ANAF’s database under your Romanian VAT number, on the day the supplier uploads them.
- ANAF uses e-Factura data for the pre-filled VAT return (RO e-TVA). The input VAT it expects to see in your D300 is no longer an unknown. A purchase invoice you did not book, or booked in another month, shows up as a difference.
- The copy you receive by email and the XML in the system must tell the same story. When they do not (a different date, a credit note that was uploaded but never emailed), the XML is what the tax authority reads.
Collecting those invoices from the Virtual Private Space and matching them against the purchase ledger each month is now part of preparing the Romanian VAT return, not an optional check.
Reporting or opting in
Article 13 of GEO 120/2021 lets a non-established operator opt into the system for B2B and B2G. Under paragraph (3^1) of article LIX, a company that has opted in stops being subject to the reporting rule from 1 July 2024, because its invoices already pass through the system as e-invoices.
When does opting in make sense? Mostly when Romanian corporate customers ask for it. Their accounts payable teams work from the e-Factura inbox, and a supplier that is visible there gets paid without the manual step of keying in a PDF. The cost is that your invoicing process has to produce RO_CIUS-compliant XML as the invoice itself, not as a by-product. For a company with a few dozen Romanian B2B invoices a month, reporting from an ERP export is usually the lighter arrangement. We look at the volume and at who the customers are before recommending one or the other.
Fines, and the one that does not apply to you
Late or missing transmission is a contravention under paragraph (7) of article LIX, with fines of RON 1,000 to 2,500, RON 2,500 to 5,000 for medium taxpayers and RON 5,000 to 10,000 for large taxpayers.
The figure that circulates most in English-language material is the fine of 15% of the invoice value. Article 13^2(1)(b) of GEO 120/2021 applies it to a recipient established in Romania that receives and records an invoice issued by an operator established in Romania without going through the system. A Romanian customer that books the invoice of a non-established supplier is not in that situation, and neither is a non-established buyer. If a Romanian customer refuses your invoice “because it is not in e-Factura”, the answer is the text of article LIX: your obligation is to report it, and you did.
The larger exposure is indirect. Reported invoices feed the comparison between e-Factura, the VAT return, the D394 statement and the SAF-T file. Output VAT that appears in e-Factura but not in the D300 of the same period is the kind of difference that starts a documentary check.
If there is a fixed establishment
Everything above assumes the company has only a VAT registration. A fixed establishment, meaning human and technical resources in Romania that take part in the supplies, makes the company established here under article 266(2) of the Tax Code. Those supplies then fall under article 10(1) and article 10^1: issuing through the system, B2C included, with the sealed XML as the legal original. Whether a warehouse operated by a third party creates a fixed establishment is a question of fact that should be answered in writing before the first invoice. The VAT guide for foreign companies covers the criteria.
How we handle it
For non-established clients we take the monthly invoice export from the ERP or the invoicing platform, convert the B2B invoices in scope to RO_CIUS XML, validate and upload them within the term, and keep the ANAF response for each file. On the purchase side we download what Romanian suppliers have uploaded under your VAT number and reconcile it with the ledger before the VAT return is filed. The full service is described on the RO e-Factura page; if the company is not yet registered, the starting point is VAT registration for non-residents.
