What Intrastat Romania is, and why it is not a tax return
Intrastat is the European system that measures trade in goods between member states. Before the single market, that information came from customs declarations; once border formalities disappeared inside the EU, the statistics had to be collected directly from businesses. Romania applies the system through legislation on the organisation of the Intrastat statistical system, and it is administered by the National Institute of Statistics (INS) — not by ANAF.
That distinction matters in practice. Intrastat is filed to a different institution, through a different application, with different credentials, on a different date from every other Romanian filing. Companies that outsource their tax compliance and assume Intrastat travels with it are the ones who discover, in month four, that nothing has been submitted.
It is also, despite being statistical, reconciled against tax data. The value of goods you report to the INS is compared against the intra-Community lines in your D390 EC Sales List. A large unexplained gap between the two is a question waiting to be asked.
Who has to report, and the RON 1,000,000 threshold
Two conditions have to hold together: the business is registered for VAT in Romania, and its intra-Community movements of goods exceed the annual threshold on a given flow.
For 2026 the threshold is RON 1,000,000, applied separately to each flow:
| Flow | What it covers | Threshold for 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Arrivals | Goods entering Romania from another member state | RON 1,000,000 |
| Dispatches | Goods leaving Romania for another member state | RON 1,000,000 |
The separation is the part that is regularly misread. A company with RON 4,000,000 of arrivals and RON 300,000 of dispatches reports arrivals only. Crossing the threshold on one flow says nothing about the other.
Thresholds are set for each reference year and are reviewed annually, so the value in force is confirmed at the start of every year against the National Institute of Statistics publication. There is also a second, higher threshold above which the declaration is extended with additional data items — the statistical value and the delivery terms, among others. The value of that second threshold changes more often than the first and should be checked for the year concerned.
When the obligation starts and when it ends
The obligation begins in the month in which the cumulative value on that flow passes the threshold, not retroactively from January. A company that crosses the arrivals threshold in September files for September onwards.
Once inside the reporting population, the company stays there for the remainder of that year and for the whole of the following year, regardless of volume. Which means two things follow automatically:
- Nil months are declared. A month with no movements still produces a declaration, with no records in it.
- Leaving the population is a decision made at the start of a reference year, based on the value achieved in the previous one — not something that happens by itself as soon as volumes drop.
For a foreign company that opened a Romanian VAT number for a single project, this is the trap: the project ends, the flows stop, and the filing obligation runs on for another year.
Deadline
The declaration is due by the 15th of the month following the reference month, submitted to the INS through its own electronic application, with credentials issued to the declarant. Where the 15th falls on a weekend or a public holiday, the deadline moves to the next working day.
The 15th places Intrastat first in the Romanian monthly cycle — ten days before the VAT return and the EC Sales List, fifteen before the D394. It has to be prepared from data that is not yet fully closed, which is exactly why it is best built from the same extract that will later produce the tax filings. The full sequence is set out in the Romanian tax calendar.
What the declaration contains
Intrastat describes goods, not invoices. For each flow and reference month, each record carries:
- the commodity code from the Combined Nomenclature — eight digits, and the single item that generates the most work;
- the partner member state: the country of dispatch for arrivals, the country of destination for dispatches;
- the value of the goods in RON;
- the net mass in kilograms and, where the nomenclature requires one, the supplementary unit;
- the nature of the transaction — sale, return, processing, transfer of own goods without a change of ownership;
- the mode of transport and, above the second threshold, the delivery terms and the statistical value.
Two characteristics separate Intrastat from the VAT filings. It follows the physical movement, so a transfer of your own goods with no sale and no invoice is reported. And it is excluded for goods in transit that merely pass through Romania without entering the economic circuit here.
Penalties, and the exposure that is not a penalty
Failure to submit the declaration, late submission and submission of incorrect data are sanctioned under the Romanian legislation on the organisation of the Intrastat statistical system. The INS applies the sanctions; the amounts are set in that legislation and are confirmed against the version in force.
The more common cost is administrative. The INS issues reminders and requests for correction directly to the declarant, and unresolved gaps accumulate. Separately, ANAF sees the mismatch between your intra-Community declarations and the statistical data, and that inconsistency behaves like any other in the Romanian system: it raises the taxpayer’s risk profile.
How we handle Intrastat for you
We monitor the threshold before it is crossed. This is the part most providers do not do. We track cumulative arrivals and dispatches month by month against the RON 1,000,000 limit, so the first declaration is prepared in advance rather than discovered late. For a company approaching the threshold, we say so two months before.
We map the commodity codes once. Assigning Combined Nomenclature codes to a product catalogue is the real work in Intrastat, and it is a one-off. Our tools take your item master, map it to the eight-digit codes, and flag every new article that appears in a period so it is classified before the declaration is generated rather than after a correction request.
We build the declaration from the same extract as the tax filings, then reconcile the goods values against the D390 and against the intra-Community boxes in the VAT return. Differences that are legitimate — services in the D390 but not in Intrastat, transfers of own goods in both — are documented rather than left to be asked about.
We file with the INS by the 15th and return the confirmation, together with a short note on the month’s flows.
You send the data; the classification, the declaration and the submission stay with us. The fee is a fixed monthly amount for the agreed set of filings.
Specific situations
Foreign companies with a Romanian warehouse. Goods moved into Romania from a group warehouse in another member state are arrivals, even though nothing was sold. Goods dispatched to customers elsewhere in the EU are dispatches. Both count towards the thresholds. The wider picture is in the guide to VAT in Romania for foreign companies.
Marketplace and e-commerce sellers. Movements of stock between fulfilment centres in different member states are reportable movements. Sales to individuals under the one-stop shop are outside the D390 but the underlying goods movements can still be Intrastat records. The interaction is covered in the guide to e-commerce VAT in Romania.
Goods sent for processing and returned. These have their own nature-of-transaction codes and are reported in both directions, at values that are not the invoice values. Getting this wrong is common and produces large, visible distortions.
Road movements that also trigger e-Transport. An intra-Community movement of goods by road can fall simultaneously under Intrastat and under RO e-Transport, which requires a UIT code before the vehicle departs. The two systems are unrelated in law and completely overlapping in practice, so it is worth mapping them together.
The errors we see most often
- The threshold crossed unnoticed, because nobody was tracking the cumulative value on each flow.
- Both flows reported when only one is above the threshold, which is harmless but adds work indefinitely.
- Nil months skipped by companies that are inside the reporting population but had no movements.
- Transfers of own goods omitted, because there was no invoice to trigger anyone’s attention.
- Commodity codes copied from the supplier’s invoice without checking them against the Combined Nomenclature version in force for the year.
- Reporting stopped as soon as volumes fell, rather than at the start of a reference year after the reassessment.
