Working from Romania as a United Kingdom resident

At a glance

What you would actually pay

The headline rates, and the qualifier that has to travel with them. Every figure comes from Romania's own cross-checked rules, not from an estimate.

Income tax

A genuine flat 10% across salary, freelance and rental income.

Corporate tax

1% on turnover under the micro regime, otherwise 16% on profit.

Getting profit out

16% from 2026, tripled from 5% in three years.

Honest all-in

About 21.7% on a real EUR 100,000 micro-company, not the 1% the brochures still quote.

Rule coverage

What the rules say about Romania

The rules below are the ones most likely to shape a stay in Romania, in plain words and with the source behind each one. Your own report tells you which of them apply to you.

1. Significant issueSocial security

   Two clocks run at different speeds, tax switches at 183 days, social security flips at 25 percent

   This is the headline day-matrix rule for this corridor. Regulation 987/2009 defines substantial activity as at least 25 percent of working time or remuneration, roughly 55 to 60 working days on a normal working year of 220 to 253 days, which this engine approximates using your logged work days, gated at more than 55 workdays in Romania. Cross that share while teleworking from Romania for a Dutch employer, and Romanian social security applies from the first day the pattern is established, CAS at 25 percent, CASS at 10 percent and CAM at 2.25 percent, registered as a foreign employer in Romania. Meanwhile the tax treaty's 183-day test can still keep the Netherlands as the sole taxing state on the same income. The result is a real, common scenario where the tax and the social security bill land in two different countries at the same time.

2. Significant issueMoving your company

   Setting up the SRL from a Dutch kitchen table makes it a Dutch company with a Romanian file number

   Three mechanisms fire together if you form a Romanian company but keep actually running it from the Netherlands. Cod fiscal article 7 requires real economic substance in Romania before the effective-management test even applies, and treaty article 4(3) gives corporate residence to the place of effective management, so a sole director deciding from home in the Netherlands can put the whole company in Dutch tax residence, Dutch corporate tax at 19 percent up to 200,000 euro and 25.8 percent above, plus Dutch dividend tax, replacing every Romanian benefit rather than adding to it. The same economic-ties test that can manufacture your personal Romanian residence through a bank account can equally leave you dual-resident with the treaty tie-breaker landing back on the Netherlands if home, family and habitual life stay there. And a Dutch home office used habitually for the company's core activity is the textbook case for a Dutch permanent establishment under treaty article 5. The micro regime's own conditions, a Romanian employee, a Romanian mandate contract, Romanian accounting, on-time Romanian filings, are substance requirements in disguise, they reward moving and punish not moving, deliberately.

3. Significant issuePersonal income tax

   Dividend tax has tripled to 16 percent since 2022, and it is the biggest single number in this corridor

   Romanian dividend tax rose from 5 percent through 2022, to 8 percent in 2023 and 2024, to 10 percent in 2025, to 16 percent for dividends distributed from 1 January 2026, a 220 percent increase in three years, set by Legea 141/2025. This applies whether the recipient is a Romanian company, a Romanian individual, or a non-resident, subject to any treaty relief. The one planning window, distributing dividends from 2025 interim accounts at the old 10 percent rate, closed on 31 December 2025 and cannot be reopened.

4. Significant issueTax residency

   Opening a Romanian company bank account can manufacture your own tax residence

   The centre of vital interests test in Cod fiscal article 7 looks at your economic ties, and the statute names holding accounts or credit and debit cards at Romanian banks as an economic indicator. A Dutch freelancer who forms an SRL, opens its bank account and gets a Romanian debit card has created evidence for Romanian tax residence before ever spending a night in the country. This is one of the most common and least visible traps in the whole corridor.

5. Significant issueLeaving home: exit tax and ties

   Moving to Romania does not switch off the Dutch exit tax on your company shares

   Emigrating from the Netherlands with a substantial interest in a company triggers a deemed disposal and a conserverende aanslag, a preserving assessment, on the gain at the box 2 rate in force, 24.5 percent up to the first bracket and 31 percent above it for 2026. Because Romania is an EU state, payment deferral is automatic with no security required, but since emigrations from September 2015 onward the assessment simply never expires, it sits collectible indefinitely until a triggering event, a share disposal, a dividend distribution, or the company ceasing to exist. Romania's own genuinely low personal tax burden does nothing to reduce or replace this Dutch claim, the two systems operate entirely independently of each other.

6. Significant issuePermanent establishment risk

   A teleworking employee's home office can turn into a Romanian permanent establishment for the employer

   Treaty article 5 defines a Romanian permanent establishment two ways that both matter for a teleworker. A fixed place of business PE can arise from a home office used continuously where the employer requires or insists on that arrangement, rather than the employee simply preferring it. A dependent agent PE can arise separately, but only under the classic, pre-BEPS test that article 5 actually carries, an agent who has, and habitually exercises, authority to conclude contracts in the name of the employer. Romania entered a reservation on the entirety of MLI article 12, deposited 28 February 2022, and the Netherlands holds the same reservation, so the post-2017 principal-role test, which catches an agent who merely negotiates or plays the leading role without formally concluding the contract, never enters the NL-RO 1998 treaty. Merely negotiating terms or influencing a deal without authority to conclude it is not enough on its own under this treaty. A PE brings Romanian corporate income tax at 16 percent on attributable profit, full registration and accounting obligations, and it also collapses the treaty's short-stay employment exemption, so even a short-stay employee becomes Romanian-taxable on the days actually worked there. Letting the employee handle their own social security filing is a risk flag, not a fix, the employer stays legally responsible by default.

What tends to surprise people here

• The micro-company regime shrank to EUR 100,000 with a one-employee condition
• Dividend tax rose to 16 percent in 2026 and health contributions bite on top
• No telework framework agreement, social security flips at 25 percent of working time

Tax treaty between United Kingdom and Romania