Romania — Work Calendar, Salary and VAT Reference

Romania operates a forty-hour standard workweek under the Labour Code, with most office work running a nine-to-six or ten-to-seven schedule with a one-hour lunch break. The five-day Monday-to-Friday rhythm is universal, and overtime work is restricted to a maximum of eight hours per week and forty-eight hours per week including overtime.

Statutory paid leave is twenty working days per year for most full-time employees, and many collective agreements or individual contracts add a few more days. The cultural expectation is for a summer leave block in July or August, with smaller breaks at Easter and around the winter holidays in late December and early January. Romanian Orthodox Easter often falls on a different date from Western Easter, and the surrounding period is treated as a major family holiday.

Romania has become one of the largest software development and shared services hubs in Eastern Europe, with major centres in Bucharest, Cluj-Napoca, Timișoara and Iași. The cultural environment in modern Romanian technology offices is comparable to other international startup hubs, with English fluency essentially universal in IT roles and remote-first arrangements common.

Romania observes fifteen public holidays per year, including New Year's Day, the day after New Year, Epiphany on 6 January, Saint John's Day on 7 January, Unification Day on 24 January, Orthodox Good Friday, Orthodox Easter Sunday and Monday, Labour Day, Children's Day on 1 June, Pentecost Sunday and Monday (Orthodox), Assumption on 15 August, Saint Andrew's Day on 30 November, National Day on 1 December, Christmas Day, the day after Christmas. The exact list has been expanded over the past decade through legislative additions.

Romanian Orthodox Easter follows the Julian calendar adjusted by the Greek-Orthodox calendar rule, which produces a date that is usually but not always a week or two after Western (Gregorian) Easter. International project planners working with Romanian counterparts should always check the Orthodox Easter date for the specific year rather than assume the Western date applies.

When a public holiday falls on a weekend, no substitute day is automatically granted, but the government routinely declares additional non-working days adjacent to public holidays to create long weekends (so-called punte days). These declarations are usually made several months in advance and are mandatory for the public sector while strongly observed in the private sector.

Romanian payroll combines a flat ten percent personal income tax (with selected exemptions for IT, construction and agricultural workers under specific conditions) with a 25 percent pension contribution and a 10 percent health contribution paid by the employee. The flat tax produces a relatively simple net calculation, and the predictability has made Romania attractive for shared services and BPO operations.

Employer-side payroll cost in Romania is roughly 2.25 percent of gross for the work insurance contribution, which is among the lowest employer cost rates in the EU. Major Romanian payroll reforms in 2018 and subsequent years shifted the bulk of social contributions from the employer to the employee, which means a Romanian gross salary number is significantly higher than the equivalent net compared to Western European peers, but the employer cost is dramatically lower.

The IT sector exemption from the ten percent income tax was substantially modified in 2023-2024 with new conditions on company size, project structure and minimum salary thresholds. Many Romanian IT employers continue to offer salary ranges that benefit from the exemption to remain competitive, and the precise conditions should be verified at the contract stage.

Romania applies a standard VAT (TVA) rate of nineteen percent, reduced rates of nine percent (food, restaurant services, hotel accommodation, pharmaceuticals) and five percent (books, newspapers, sports facilities, social housing under specific conditions). The reduced rates have been extensively revised over the past five years and are subject to ongoing legislative change, so always confirm the current applicable rate.

Romanian invoice content rules follow the EU directive but include the e-Factura electronic invoicing system that became mandatory for most B2B transactions in 2024. Invoices must be generated and transmitted through the national e-Factura platform within five working days of issue, and PDF-by-email invoicing alone is not legally compliant for in-scope transactions.

The Romanian VAT registration threshold is 300,000 RON in annual turnover (approximately sixty thousand euros). Above the threshold, registration is mandatory with monthly or quarterly returns depending on turnover and structure. The registration process can take several weeks, and businesses planning to enter the Romanian market should start the process well in advance of their first invoice.

When recruiting in Romania for an English-speaking technology role, evaluate Cluj-Napoca, Timișoara and Iași in addition to Bucharest. The talent pool in regional tech hubs is strong and often more cost-competitive than Bucharest while offering a more stable workforce.

Treat Orthodox Easter and the surrounding Friday and Monday as essentially closed days for any planning purpose. The cultural weight of the Easter holiday in Romania is comparable to Christmas in many Western European cultures, and project deadlines that fall in this window will typically slip.

If your business sells to Romanian B2B customers, set up e-Factura integration as part of go-to-market preparation. Foreign suppliers can use Romanian certified intermediaries, and the integration typically takes two to four weeks once the technical account is established with the Romanian Tax Authority.