The 395,000 lei threshold: becoming VAT-registered by accident

Romania's small-business VAT exemption threshold rose to 395,000 lei in September 2025, from 300,000. What catches people out is not the figure but the procedure: the registration request is due on the very day you cross it, not by the 10th of the following month — and VAT applies from the transaction that caused the crossing.

1. What changed

Threshold 300,000 → 395,000 lei. Registration deadline: from "by the 10th of next month" to the day you exceed. Standard rate 19% → 21%; the 9% and 5% reduced rates merged into 11%, with a transitional 9% for homes until 30 September 2026.

2. The invoice that breaks the threshold

VAT does not start with the next invoice — it starts with the one that took you over. If you have invoiced 380,000 so far and issue one for 30,000, that invoice needed VAT on it. At 21%, that is 6,300 lei.

3. What counts toward the threshold

Not "what I collected", nor "everything I invoiced". Under article 310(2) of the tax code it is taxable supplies plus exempt supplies with the right of deduction. It excludes sales of fixed assets — and, the one that surprises most people, operations whose place of supply is outside Romania.

A developer invoicing only US companies supplies services placed at the client, not in Romania. That revenue does not count toward the 395,000. You can invoice 600,000 lei in a year and remain outside the VAT regime — anyone telling you otherwise is reading the accounting total, not the statutory base.

Careful though: intra-EU B2B services trigger a different registration, under article 317, which does not make you a VAT payer but exists and has its own deadlines.

4. If you register late

ANAF can register you ex officio, retroactively from the date you crossed. VAT is then due on every invoice issued since — invoices you sent without VAT and whose clients will not pay the difference now. It comes out of your margin, plus interest and penalties.

5. Three things to do now

1. Know where you stand today, on the statutory base, not on the trial balance total.
2. Set your own warning line lower — at 350,000. Those 45,000 lei are the room in which you can still decide calmly what to do with the last invoice.
3. If you cross, cross tidily: the request on the day, the triggering invoice reissued with VAT, and the clients told before, not after.