Last updated: 2 February 2023
Starting with January 1, 2023, new categories of employees in the IT field hired based on an employment contract may benefit of an income tax exemption enacted by the Order no. 21813/6421/2246/4433/2022, published in the Official Gazette no. 1252/2022.
The newly enacted Order, repealing the regulation in place since 2018, ads to the list of IT specialists1 qualifying for such income tax exemption software development engineers, provided that they are hired by a Romanian company whose object includes software development2 and meet the conditions hereinbelow.
The new regulation broadens the category of beneficiaries of such tax incentive to include foreign residents (non-EU residents) employees of Romanian companies, if they get the equivalence or the recognition of their diplomas, and public service employees.
Furthermore, employees posted to a Romanian employer may benefit of this incentive if they meet the conditions relating to the position filled, the academic background and if they are paid by the Romanian entity.
This incentive indirectly benefits employers as well, considering the small gap between the gross salary they provide, and the net salary received by their employees. So, this incentive means they can have a lower payroll budget due to lower gross salaries, thus attracting talented developers with appealing net salaries.
Conditions for benefitting of the income tax exemption
To qualify for benefitting of the income tax exemption on salaries, an employee must fulfil several cumulative conditions:
- fills one of the positions mentioned in the annex to the hereby Order;
- the position belongs to a structure specialising in information technology, duly indicated in the employer’s organizational chart;
- holds a diploma issued at the end of a short-term or a long-term higher education course or a diploma issued at the end of undergraduate studies by an authorised higher education establishment, or a baccalaureate diploma followed by courses in an authorised higher education establishment and carries out one of the activities provided for in the annex to the said Order;
- during the previous fiscal year, the employer carried out software creation activities intended for sale and recorded them as such in separate analytical accounting accounts;
- the yearly turnover referred to at letter d) shall amount to at least the equivalent in Lei of 10,000 euros (calculated to the average exchange rate of the National Bank of Romania for each month of income) for each employee benefiting of the tax income exemption.
This condition does not apply to companies incorporated during the reference year, neither for the reference year nor for the following.
Please note that determining whether an employee qualifies for benefiting of such fiscal advantage and forming the underlying file for each employee concerned falls entirely to the employer.
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Notes
- Other positions listed : data base administrator, analyst, IT systems engineer, software systems designer, IT project manager, developer, IT systems designer.
- Corresponding to CAEN Code 5821, 5829, 6201, 6202, 6209