What changed on 1 August 2025
The Romania VAT rate 21% became the standard rate on 1 August 2025, replacing the 19% that had applied since 2017. At the same moment the two reduced rates, 9% and 5%, were reorganised into a single reduced rate of 11%. The measure is Law 141/2025 on certain fiscal-budgetary measures, published in the Official Gazette, Part I, no. 699 of 25 July 2025, with the VAT provisions in force from 1 August 2025.
This is not a technical adjustment. A two-point move in the standard rate changes consumer prices, margins on fixed-price contracts, cash flow on advances, and the configuration of every system that issues a Romanian invoice. It also changes the arithmetic in the VAT return D300 for any period that straddles the date.
The rates themselves are set out in article 291 of the Fiscal Code, whose consolidated text is published by ANAF.
What two points actually cost
On a VAT-inclusive contract of RON 1,190,000 — a price set when the standard rate was 19% — the net was RON 1,000,000 and the VAT RON 190,000. If the same gross price is kept after the change, the VAT at 21% is 1,190,000 × 21 / 121 = RON 206,529, and the net falls to RON 983,471. The supplier loses RON 16,529 of revenue on that contract without renegotiating anything.
On a price plus VAT contract of RON 1,000,000 net, nothing moves for the supplier: the VAT charged rises from RON 190,000 to RON 210,000 and the customer pays RON 1,210,000. Which of those two sentences describes your contracts is the question worth answering before anything else.
Which supplies moved where
The reduced-rate structure was rewritten rather than simply renumbered, which is why a mechanical substitution of 9% by 11% is not a safe way to reconfigure a system.
| Before 1 August 2025 | After 1 August 2025 |
|---|---|
| 19% standard | 21% standard |
| 9% reduced | 11% reduced, for most of the previous content of the band |
| 5% reduced | 11% for a large part of the band; the standard rate for some supplies |
The 11% band covers the categories that dominate the reduced rate in practice: food and beverages, medicines, water supply and sewerage services, accommodation, restaurant and catering services, and books, newspapers and periodicals. Several supplies that used to enjoy the 5% rate did not move to 11% at all but went to the standard rate.
Two cautions are worth more than a longer list. First, the treatment of dwellings and of construction-related supplies was among the most heavily reworked areas and should be checked line by line against the enacting text before any contract is priced. Second, exemptions were not part of this change: intra-Community supplies, exports and the other exempt operations kept their treatment, and only the rates applied to taxable supplies moved.
Transition: which rate applies to what
The rule that resolves almost every practical question is that the rate follows the moment of the supply, not the date printed on the invoice.
- A delivery of goods completed in July is taxed at 19% or the old reduced rates, even if the invoice is issued in August.
- A service completed in August is taxed at 21% or 11%, even if it was contracted and quoted in June.
- Advances invoiced before 1 August at the old rates were correct when issued. Where the underlying supply happens after the change, the difference is regularised on the final invoice, so that the VAT charged in total corresponds to the rate applicable to the supply.
- Continuous supplies — rent, subscriptions, utilities, service retainers — follow the period they cover, so a billing period spanning the change is split.
- Credit notes and corrections follow the original transaction. A credit note issued in September against a July invoice carries the July rate.
Where the contract states a VAT-inclusive price, the two points come out of the supplier’s margin unless the contract says otherwise. Where it states a price plus VAT, they are passed to the customer. Reviewing long-term contracts for which of the two they say is the single most valuable thing a finance team can do in the weeks after the change, and it is a question our tax advisory work has handled repeatedly since the announcement.
What to correct in your systems
- Tax codes in the ERP. New codes for 21% and 11%, with validity dates, rather than editing the percentage on the existing codes. Editing in place rewrites history and breaks the reporting of earlier periods.
- Price lists and the webshop. Gross prices, price displays and any rounding rule applied at line or document level.
- The SAF-T tax table. The D406 file reports VAT using codes from the official nomenclature, not percentages. A period containing transactions on both sides of the change needs both sets of codes present and correctly assigned.
- Recurring documents. Standing invoices, subscription billing and templates carry the rate that was configured when they were created.
- Cash registers and point-of-sale software, where the rate is often stored per product group.
- The VAT return mapping. The boxes of the return are organised by rate, so a period with mixed rates has to split correctly rather than aggregate.
For foreign companies the coordination problem is usually larger than the technical one, because the change has to be made in a group system by people who do not follow Romanian legislation. The full cycle for non-established businesses is set out in the guide on VAT in Romania for foreign companies.
Why 19% is still circulating
Rate tables published by international directories, invoicing platforms and advisory websites update on their own schedule, and a mid-year change in a medium-sized member state is exactly the kind of update that lags. More than a year after other changes of this type, tables quoting the superseded figure are still easy to find.
The risk is not academic. An invoice issued after 1 August 2025 at 19% understates the supplier’s output VAT. The supplier owes the difference regardless of whether it was collected from the customer, and late-payment interest runs from the original due date. On the buying side, a Romanian customer that deducts VAT from an incorrectly rated invoice has a document problem as well as an amount problem. Neither party benefits from the mistake.
Two checks close the gap: verify the current rate against the Fiscal Code or the guidance published by ANAF rather than a rate table, and put a validation in the invoicing system that rejects a Romanian document carrying a rate that is not currently valid.
Where the position stands now
The 21% and 11% rates have held through 2026: the fiscal packages that followed Law 141/2025 changed direct taxation, the reporting obligations and the micro-enterprise regime, but not the VAT rates. What did keep moving is the detail around them — the category mapping in the reduced band, where official guidance has accumulated since the rewrite, and the VAT cash accounting threshold, which GEO 8/2026 raised for 2026 and again from 2027.
The lesson for system design is the same either way. Keep the tax codes dated and flexible enough that the next adjustment is a configuration change rather than a project, and never edit a rate in place on an existing code — that rewrites history and breaks the reporting of earlier periods.
