What the EC Sales List is called in Romania
Across the European Union the filing is known as the EC Sales List. In Romania it is the declarație recapitulativă, submitted as form D390 VIES. It exists because intra-Community trade is taxed in the member state of destination: the supplier zero-rates, the customer self-assesses, and the only thing that connects the two sides is a statement filed in each country and matched centrally.
The legal basis is art. 325 of the Fiscal Code (Law 227/2015). The statement lists, for one month, every intra-Community transaction by counterparty VAT identification number, country code, total value and transaction type code. Those lines feed the VIES system, where they are compared against what your customer declared on the other side of the border.
For a foreign company, the D390 is often the filing that reveals whether the Romanian registration was set up correctly in the first place. If your flows do not produce the lines you expect, something upstream — the flow tagging, the delivery terms, the registration itself — is wrong.
Who has to file the D390
Anyone registered for VAT purposes in Romania who carries out reportable intra-Community transactions in a given month. Establishment is irrelevant; the Romanian VAT number is what triggers the obligation.
| Transaction | Reported in the D390 | Typical code |
|---|---|---|
| Intra-Community supply of goods from Romania to a taxable person in another member state | Yes | Supply of goods |
| Intra-Community acquisition of goods into Romania from another member state | Yes | Acquisition of goods |
| Supply as the intermediary in a triangular operation | Yes | Triangular operation |
| Services supplied to a taxable person in another member state, taxed where the customer is established | Yes | Services supplied |
| Services received from a taxable person in another member state, with reverse charge in Romania | Yes | Services received |
| Export of goods outside the European Union | No | Reported in the VAT return only |
| Domestic supply to a Romanian customer | No | Reported in the D394 |
| Distance sales to individuals under the one-stop shop | No | Reported through the OSS return |
The last three rows are where most classification errors sit. A transfer of your own goods from a Romanian warehouse to a warehouse you operate in another member state is, in VAT terms, an intra-Community supply followed by an acquisition — reportable even though no sale took place. A distance sale to a private individual is not.
The monthly rhythm, and the one filing that is not routine
The D390 is always monthly, even for a company whose VAT return is quarterly. And, uniquely among the recurring Romanian filings, it is submitted only for months with transactions. There is no nil D390.
That combination produces a characteristic pattern of mistakes. A company on a quarterly VAT return forgets that the recapitulative statement runs on a different clock. A company with sporadic intra-Community activity files nothing for four months, then forgets the fifth month in which a single supply took place.
Deadline
The statement is due by the 25th of the month following the month in which the chargeable event occurred, inclusive. When the 25th is a Saturday, a Sunday or a public holiday, the deadline moves to the next working day.
The 25th is a crowded date in Romania: the VAT return, the recapitulative statement and the payroll return all sit on it. The D394 domestic transactions return follows on the 30th, and Intrastat is due earlier, on the 15th. The full picture is in the Romanian tax calendar.
VIES validation: the check that protects the zero rate
Zero-rating an intra-Community supply of goods depends on conditions that have to hold at the moment of the supply, not at the moment of the audit. Two of them are practical: the customer must communicate a valid VAT identification number issued by another member state, and the goods must actually leave Romania, with evidence to prove it. The statement itself is the third condition — the supply has to be correctly reported in the recapitulative statement.
This is why we validate counterparty numbers in VIES before the statement is prepared and, for new customers, before the invoice is issued. A number that was valid in March and deregistered in June turns a routine supply into an assessment three years later, when the customer is gone and the evidence is thin. We keep the consultation results with the period file.
Penalties
Failure to submit the recapitulative statement within the deadline is sanctioned with a fine under the Fiscal Procedure Code (Law 207/2015), in bands set according to the taxpayer’s category; the consolidated text is published by ANAF.
The larger risk sits elsewhere. A supply that is not correctly reported in the statement is a supply whose exemption can be challenged, and the amount at stake is then the Romanian VAT on the full value of the goods, not a fixed fine. Statements that consistently disagree with the corresponding declarations filed by counterparties in other member states also generate mismatch queries through the administrative cooperation channels between tax authorities.
How we prepare and file your D390
- We take the month’s intra-Community flows from your ERP export, your journals, or listings in Excel — including transfers of own goods, which are the most commonly missed lines.
- We classify each flow into the correct transaction code. Where the tagging in your source system is ambiguous — a triangular operation booked as an ordinary supply, a service invoiced from Romania that is in fact taxable elsewhere — we raise it before the statement is built, not after.
- We validate every counterparty number in VIES and archive the result with the period file.
- We reconcile the statement against the VAT return boxes for intra-Community transactions, against Intrastat for goods flows, and against the SAF-T source documents.
- We file through the Virtual Private Space with our qualified digital certificate, under a written mandate, and send you the ANAF receipt.
Your team supplies the data and never has to work through the Romanian specifications: the statement is prepared and filed by us. The fee is a fixed monthly amount for the agreed set of filings.
Specific situations
Call-off stock arrangements. Goods moved to a customer’s premises in another member state under a call-off stock simplification are reported differently from an ordinary transfer, and the simplification has its own register and time limits. This needs to be set up deliberately, not discovered at year end.
Marketplace sellers with a Romanian warehouse. Dispatches to business customers in other member states are D390 lines; dispatches to individuals generally are not, because they fall under distance-selling rules and the one-stop shop. The split is covered in the guide to e-commerce VAT in Romania.
Groups moving goods between their own warehouses. No invoice, no sale — and still a reportable intra-Community supply and acquisition. This is the single most frequent omission we correct when taking over a foreign company’s Romanian compliance, and it is described in context in the guide to VAT in Romania for foreign companies.
Services with a place of supply outside Romania. Consultancy, software and marketing services invoiced to a business customer in another member state are D390 lines even though no goods move at all.
The errors we see most often
- A month with a single supply forgotten, because the statement is not filed every month and the routine is not built.
- Transfers of own goods left unreported, since no sale and no invoice was involved.
- Customer VAT numbers not validated at the time of supply, and found to be invalid years later.
- Triangular operations reported as ordinary supplies, which breaks the matching in two member states at once.
- Quarterly VAT filers applying the quarterly rhythm to the D390, which is always monthly.
- The statement corrected as a delta rather than as a complete replacement of the month.
