During 2025 Romania has been the focus of international media attention for the challenge between the presidential candidates the reformist Nicusor Dan and the sovereignist George Simion, with the former winning by a narrow margin; the path taken by the new coalition government of the reformist premier Ilie Bolojan and supported by the new president is that of austerity in order to reduce the budget deficit, which in the first 5 months of 2025 alone was 64.23 billion lei.

The first package of tax measures includes the reorganization of VAT, with a standard rate of 21 percent and a reduced rate of 11 percent for some categories. Excise taxes on alcohol, fuel and tobacco will increase by 10 percent.

Retirees with incomes above 3,000 lei will pay social contributions until 2028.

Higher taxes will be introduced on additional profits of banks and gambling companies.

Dividend tax will increase from 10 percent to 16 percent as of January 1, 2026.

In the education sector, the budget for student grants has increased more than 25 times in three years, from 188 million to 4.7 billion lei.

The measures announced for the second austerity package are:

– Reform of special pensions by eliminating exceptions, proper pension calculation, and retirement at retirement age.

– Reform of state-owned enterprises and autonomous agencies.

– Reform of local and central government by downsizing the budget apparatus through decentralization and digitization.

– Combat tax evasion and fraud against public money through legislative changes

– Urgently access European funds and prioritize investments with a direct impact on development.

Recall that on the level of combating evasion, Romania has already adopted powerful and INVASIVE tax monitoring tools that will come into effect during 2025 such as:

• The requirement for all taxpayers who are economic entities to file the SAF-T raport, or an extrapolation of the accounting database;
• the obligation to justify discrepancies between the VAT return filed by the taxpayer and the one prepared in automaticod to the Romanian IRS;
• fiscal monitoring of transportation to and from Romania;
• Electronic invoicing with a deadline of 5 calendar days

We would also like to remind you that as of January 1, 2026, the micro enterprise regime will be granted only to enterprises with annual sales of less than 100,000. The dividend tax increased within two years from 5% to 16%! In short, even in Romania, the taxpayer is paying the bill for the disservice of public management.