In brief

  • From 28 September 2026, any company that asks for VAT back goes through a risk filter it did not have before. ANAF Order no. 1.123/2026 adds to the 2022 procedure an annex with 14 situations from which a risk of an undue refund follows. The fourteenth breaks down into 11 cases, so the list means 24 checks. If the company is in a single one of them, its return is no longer refunded directly, but only after a prior tax inspection.
  • The first stage of analysing the return goes from 5 to 15 working days for clean companies. Until now that time limit was reserved for those entered in the special database of taxpayers at risk. For a return filed on Friday, 25 September 2026, the stage ends on 16 October, not on 2 October.
  • The new rules catch returns filed before the order was published as well. Under Article III they catch the returns for August 2026, whose filing deadline fell on 25 September, and, on top of that, every return still being processed on 28 September 2026. The only exception: returns already sent to the tax inspection unit for a prior inspection.
Act: Order of the President of the National Agency for Fiscal Administration no. 1.123/2026 amending and supplementing Order of the President of the National Agency for Fiscal Administration no. 352/2022 approving the Procedure for processing value added tax returns showing negative amounts with a refund option
Published: Official Gazette of Romania (Monitorul Oficial), Part I, no. 823 of 28 September 2026, pages 4-16
In force from: from publication, 28 September 2026, because Article 12(3) of Law no. 24/2000 on legislative drafting rules lays down that normative acts, other than laws and ordinances, take effect from the date of publication in the Official Gazette of Romania unless they themselves set a later date, and this order sets no such date

Companies that ask the State for their VAT back have had, since 28 September 2026, a new list of reasons why the money can be held until after a check. The National Agency for Fiscal Administration (ANAF) has published Order no. 1.123/2026, which touches in 49 places the procedure for processing VAT returns showing negative amounts, approved in 2022. For accountants this is the second change of regime this autumn, after the order by which ANAF assesses VAT ex officio for companies that do not file form 300. The difference is that there a failure to file was being penalised, whereas here what changes is the way in which it is decided, for each refund claim, whether the money comes now or after an inspection.

The basic mechanism remains the one in the Tax Procedure Code. Article 169 of Law no. 207/2015 says that VAT claimed as a refund is paid first and checked afterwards. The rule has exceptions, and one of them is the source of the whole discussion: if the tax authority finds, on the basis of the information it holds, that there is a risk of an undue refund, the return is settled only after a prior tax inspection, that is an inspection carried out before the money leaves. The companies for which that has been established go into an internal list, called in the procedure the special database on the risk of undue VAT refunds.

The substantive novelty is who can enter a company in that list, and for what. Until now the proposal came from somebody else: the tax inspection service, the General Directorate for Tax Anti-Fraud, the legal directorate or the taxpayer management unit, which sent a reasoned report whenever they held information of the kind described in the Code. The department that actually worked on the return had no way of starting the procedure by itself. Order no. 1.123/2026 introduces a second route, at point 8.(2): the specialist department itself analyses every return and, if it finds even one of the situations in the new Annex no. 6 to the order, draws up the report for entry.

The annex has 14 items. The first four concern the people behind the company: shareholders, members or directors already in the special database, the same people holding such positions in other companies that are in it, joint or patrimonial liability entered in the tax record, acts penalised as criminal offences in the record of those who represent or manage the company. Then comes the company’s own conduct: adjustments of deductible or output VAT with a significant impact on the amount claimed, a significant increase in the amount compared with earlier claims, a high frequency of corrections of clerical errors, forms 394, 390 and 406 not filed on the date the return is filed, procedures for preventing insolvency, and the state of tax insolvency, a separate finding which means that the debtor has no assets or income that can be pursued.

Item 11 is the one that concerns young companies: a company set up less than 6 months before the return is filed goes into the analysis automatically. Items 12 and 13 bring into the procedure the reporting systems of recent years: VAT from the invoices reported in RO e-Factura and from the receipts in RO e-Case de marcat higher than the output VAT in the return, and, respectively, deductible VAT in the returns higher than the VAT in the invoices which the company’s suppliers reported in e-Factura.

Item 14 is the longest, and it looks at suppliers, not at the company asking for the money. If at least one of the suppliers from which a significant proportion of the deductible VAT comes is in one of 11 cases, the company acquires risk: the supplier appears in the special database, is in voluntary liquidation or insolvency, has criminal offences in its tax record, has not filed forms 300, 394, 390 or 406, reports more in e-Factura than it collects in the return, is in tax insolvency or bankruptcy, has VAT arrears, appears in the register of inactive taxpayers or in that of taxpayers whose VAT number has been cancelled, has been registered or re-registered for VAT purposes in the last 6 months and files quarterly, is a related party of the claimant, or was set up less than 6 months before the return.

The consequence for a return already filed is immediate. Point 12 of the procedure said until now that, when the company is entered in the special database, the procedure is interrupted and the return is settled in accordance with the analysis in points 15.(1) to 15.(20), an analysis that could also end in a refund. The new text cuts out the intermediate step: the return is settled with a prior tax inspection. If in the meantime a refund decision had been issued subject to subsequent verification, that decision is annulled, and for this the company receives a new document, the Decision annulling the VAT refund decision, whose template enters the order as Annex no. 5. The document can be challenged within 45 days of notification, on pain of forfeiture.

On time limits, the change reads in a single line. Point 39.(2) provided that the first stage, the one in which the return is analysed, ends within 5 working days for companies that did not appear in the special database and within 15 working days for those that did. The order leaves a single time limit, of 15 working days, for everybody. The legal time limit for settling the claim remains the one in Article 77 of the Tax Procedure Code: 45 days, or at most 90 days where an inspection is needed.

Companies whose VAT number has been cancelled are now treated on two tracks, according to the reason for the cancellation. On the first are the blameless exits, that is points (f), (g) and (i) of Article 316(11) of the Tax Code: the company was neither obliged nor entitled to register, it asked to be taken off the register in order to apply the exemption scheme for small enterprises or the special scheme for farmers, or it moved to the cross-border scheme for small enterprises. There the return is no longer subject to the procedure at all, and the amounts are repaid under the general procedure approved by Order of the Minister of Public Finance no. 1.899/2004, only after a tax inspection. On the second track are the cancellations with a reproach behind them, points (a), (c) to (e) and (h): the company declared inactive, the one with criminal offences in the tax record of its members or directors, the one that has filed no return for six months in a row, the one whose returns show neither purchases nor supplies, and the one with a high tax risk. There the procedure comes to an end, and the negative amounts can be taken up again in the first return filed after re-registration. The split covers every point in force, because point (b), temporary inactivity entered in the trade register, has been repealed since 1 January 2017. A new exception, point 821, concerns companies whose place of business is outside Romania: they may ask for the repayment of the amounts in the return being processed on the date of the cancellation, if they declare that they have ceased their activity on Romanian territory.

The transitional provisions matter more than the rest. Article III(1) says that the order applies from the returns for August 2026 and for the third quarter of 2026 onwards. Paragraph (2) adds that it also applies to returns still being processed on the date of entry into force, except those already sent to the tax inspection department. Signed on 21 September 2026 and published on 28 September, the order has in the middle of it Friday, 25 September, the day on which the deadline for filing the August return fell. Companies that filed on time came, three days later, under rules that did not exist on the day they filed.

What it changes in practice

The first effect is on time. A return showing a negative amount filed on 25 September 2026 by a company with no problems used to get through the first stage by 2 October. From 28 September, the same stage may end on 16 October. That is two weeks more before the file even reaches the decision whether the refund is paid directly or sent to an inspection. The 45-day time limit in the Tax Procedure Code does not change, but the first stage now takes up 21 of the 45 calendar days, compared with 7 before.

The second effect is on the probability of a check. Until 27 September 2026, points 50 and 60 of the procedure said plainly that a return filed by a company with no criminal offences in its tax record and not entered in the two special databases is settled by issuing the refund decision. It was a rule of result: clean file, money. In place of the result there is now an analysis: the department first checks whether the company is in any of the 24 situations in the annex, and only then decides. Whoever passes gets the refund decision; whoever does not passes into the special database and on to a prior inspection.

The third effect concerns the documents the company receives. The annulment of a refund decision issued subject to subsequent verification existed before as well, at points 14 and 21.(4), but without a form and without a name. It now has an approved template, a legal basis written into it, Article 94(2) of the Tax Procedure Code, and a remedy: a challenge within 45 days of notification, before the tax authority having jurisdiction under Article 272. Companies enrolled in „Spațiul privat virtual”, the Virtual Private Space, the tax authority’s secure online account, receive the decisions through that service, under the new point 43.(3).

The fourth effect is internal, but it shows in practice. Every day the specialist department sends the inspection unit a schedule listing the returns classified that day for a prior inspection, on a new template, in which the legal basis and the reason are written down, including the situation in the annex for which the company was considered risky. Before, the files were sent without a list of reasons. From the same place comes the annual tidying duty: by 31 January, the department removes from the special database the companies struck off the tax records in the previous year.

The fifth effect touches returns filed late. They were not subject to the procedure before either, and the negative amount was carried over into the following period. The new point 33.(21) adds two things: the late return enters the procedure for the ex officio correction of clerical errors, and the company is notified in writing that it has to carry the balance over into the next return. Anyone who filed a day late and waited for the money now learns this through a notification, not from silence.

What has changed compared with the previous situation

The version in force until 27 September 2026 was the one consolidated on 28 April 2026, after the only amendment made so far to Order no. 352/2022, by ANAF Order no. 506/2026, published in the Official Gazette of Romania no. 338 of 28 April 2026. The comparison is made with that version, not with the text of March 2022.

The risk analysis has moved from the report to the list. Point 10 had four sub-points, which reproduced the situations in Article 169(4) of the Tax Procedure Code and which all started from a report by another unit. Point (d), the significant discrepancies between the company’s forms 394 and 390 VIES and those of its partners, has been replaced altogether: in its place there is now the specialist department’s own finding, made on the basis of Annex no. 6. From point (a) the last paragraph has been repealed, the one requiring that reports based on information from criminal investigation bodies be drawn up only after criminal proceedings have been set in motion.

The definition of the first return has been widened. Point 58.(3) said, word for word, that the first return filed after registration for VAT purposes means the first claim filed after the initial registration, „nu și după reînregistrarea în scopuri de TVA”, and not after a fresh registration for VAT purposes. The new version says exactly the opposite: the claim filed after re-registration is included too, under Article 316(12) of the Tax Code, as is the one filed after the refund option has been given up. Since the first return is in any case settled after a prior tax inspection, companies that get their VAT number back will go through a check on the first refund they claim after coming back. A new paragraph, 58.(4), adds that the second return also goes to an inspection if, on the date it is filed, the decision on the first has not been notified to them.

The window in which ANAF can still reverse a refund has grown shorter. Point 35 defined the return as being under processing between the date of filing and the date of the actual set-off or repayment of the approved amounts. The new text closes the window on the date of the first discharge operation, the first set-off or repayment, „indiferent de suma stinsă”, whatever the amount discharged. For a company that receives the money in instalments, this means that the first instalment takes the return out of the zone in which the refund decision can still be annulled.

One of the administration’s time limits has disappeared. Point 74 is repealed. It required the specialist department to inform the company, within one day at most of receiving the set-off decision or the repayment note, how its claim had been settled. Through the new point 72.(1) the task passes to the collection department, which sends the taxable person a copy of the set-off decision or of the repayment note. That one-day time limit is nowhere to be found any more.

Chapter VI has been rewritten around the grounds for cancelling the VAT number. The old points 78 and 79 spoke about the cancellation of the registration „potrivit art. 316 alin. (11)”, under that provision, without distinguishing between the grounds. Now each ground has its own route, and a new point, 80.(1), covers the situation in which the number had already been cancelled on the date the return was filed, a case that was not regulated before. The record of the amounts left unsettled when the company is struck off, kept until now in an undefined „evidență separată”, a separate record, now gets a template of its own, Annex no. 7 to the procedure.

The forms have changed in a block. The order replaces Annexes nos. 1, 2 and 3 to the procedure, that is the register of returns and the sheet for reconstituting the negative amount together with its instructions, and it replaces Annex no. 4 to the order, the decision closing the procedure. The register of returns, reproduced in facsimile on page 10 of the issue, now has 36 columns for large and medium taxpayers and 40 for the rest, with new columns for the report on maintaining or removing the entry, for the decision annulling the refund and for the total or partial annulment of the decision following a challenge.

Advantages and disadvantages

What it improves

  • The annulment of a refund decision has, at last, a form, a legal basis written into it and a remedy. Before, the company learned that its decision had been annulled without receiving a document it could challenge as such.
  • The risk criteria are published. Anyone can read the 14 situations in Annex no. 6 and see why they were sent to an inspection, instead of inferring it from silence.
  • The window in which a refund can be reversed closes on the first discharge operation, whatever the amount, not on full discharge. It is a clear limit where the old text left room for interpretation.
  • The decisions reach enrolled companies through „Spațiul privat virtual”, and the refund decision is notified within one day at most of approval, a time limit that did not exist before.
  • Foreign companies that close down their activity in Romania can ask for the repayment of the amounts in the return being processed when the number is cancelled, instead of losing them while waiting for a re-registration that will never come.
  • Returns filed after the deadline are cleared up by a written notification, not by the absence of any reply.

What remains a problem

  • The rule of a clean file and the money follows has gone. Points 50 and 60 guaranteed the refund decision for companies with no criminal offences in their record and not entered in the special databases. The guarantee is now replaced by an analysis whose outcome is not predictable.
  • Of the 24 tests in the annex, 14 concern somebody other than the company asking for the money: 3 look at shareholders and directors, 11 at suppliers. A company that does everything right can end up at an inspection because a supplier filed its forms wrongly.
  • The word „semnificativ”, significant, appears seven times in the annex, without a single threshold. The Tax Procedure Code, in Article 169(4)(c), knows how to quantify: more than 10% of the amount refunded, but not less than 50,000 lei. The annex takes nothing from that habit.
  • The first stage has tripled, from 5 to 15 working days, for companies that have done nothing. Those 15 days were, until now, the treatment reserved for those already under suspicion.
  • Entry in the special database is made on an internal report, approved by a committee of the tax authority. The company is not heard beforehand, and the document making the entry is not notified to it. It learns only the consequence.
  • The order applies to returns filed before it was published, including those for August 2026, whose filing deadline fell three days earlier.

Practical advice

  1. Read Annex no. 6 to the order as a checklist before you tick the refund option, not afterwards. The 14 situations are on page 15 of issue no. 823, and the one at item 14 has 11 points.
  2. Check the suppliers from which most of the deductible VAT comes. The register of inactive taxpayers, the register of persons whose VAT number has been cancelled and the state of their filings are public, and three of the 11 points of item 14 can be verified in advance.
  3. If the company was set up in the last 6 months, assume that the first refund claim will go to an inspection. Both item 11 of the annex and point 58 of the procedure lead there.
  4. If your VAT number was cancelled and you have got it back, treat the first refund claim filed after re-registration as a first return. The old rule made an exception for it, the new one does not.
  5. Do not file the second return with a refund option before the decision on the first has been notified to you. Point 58.(4) sends the second return to a prior inspection for the simple reason that the first has not been closed.
  6. If you receive the Decision annulling the VAT refund decision, note the date of notification. You have 45 days to lodge a challenge, on pain of forfeiture, and the time limit runs from notification, not from the date of the decision.
  7. Before filing, check that forms 394, 390 and 406 whose deadlines have passed have all been filed. Item 8 of the annex looks at exactly that, on the date the return is filed.
  8. For the returns for the third quarter, the filing deadline falls on 25 October 2026, a Sunday, so it expires on Monday, 26 October. They are already filed under the new rules, without the discussion about retroactive application.

Frequently asked questions

From when do the new rules apply?
The order entered into force on publication, on 28 September 2026. Under Article III it applies to the returns for August 2026 and for the third quarter of 2026, as well as to every return still being processed on 28 September, except those already sent for a prior tax inspection.
I filed the August return on time, on 25 September. What happens to it?
It comes under the new rules. The specialist department will analyse whether the company is in one of the situations in Annex no. 6, and the first stage ends within 15 working days of filing, not 5. The only situation in which the old rules still apply is the one in which the return had already been sent to the tax inspection unit for a prior inspection.
How many risk situations are there in fact?
The annex counts 14 items, but item 14 breaks down into points (a) to (k), that is 11 distinct cases concerning suppliers. The real number of checks is 24.
Can a new company still get a refund without a check?
Hardly. Item 11 of the annex treats as a risk being set up less than 6 months before the return is filed, and point 58 of the procedure sends the first return with a refund option to a prior tax inspection in any case.
What does the annulment of the refund decision mean?
The tax authority has already approved the refund subject to subsequent verification, and then found that the company meets a condition calling for a prior inspection. The initial decision is annulled with effect from the date the new decision is issued, and the return goes back onto the route with an inspection. The document can be challenged within 45 days of notification.
How long can a refund take now?
The legal time limit remains the one in Article 77 of the Tax Procedure Code: 45 days from the registration of the claim, and, where a tax inspection is needed, at most 90 days. The order leaves those time limits untouched and moves only the internal stage of analysis, from 5 to 15 working days.
If one of my suppliers has problems, do I lose the refund?
You do not lose it, but you risk getting it after an inspection. Item 14 of the annex concerns the suppliers from which a significant proportion of the deductible VAT comes, and its 11 points cover everything from insolvency and the tax record to failure to file returns and being a related party of the company asking for the money.
What happens to a return filed after the legal deadline?
It is not subject to the processing procedure. The negative amount is taken up again in the return for the following period, and the novelty is that the return enters the procedure for the ex officio correction of clerical errors and that the company receives a written notification of the obligation to carry the balance over.

Errors and inconsistencies in the published text

  • Article 169(4)(d) of the Tax Procedure Code is left without a route through the procedure. The order narrows to points (a) to (c) both the duty to notify the control units, at point 8.(1), and the scope of the new Annex no. 6, which lists the risk situations „altele decât cele prevăzute la art. 169 alin. (4) lit. a)-c)”, other than the ones it names there. At the same time, point 10(d), which until now reproduced point (d) of the Code, that is the significant discrepancies between the company’s forms 394 and 390 VIES and those of its partners, is given a completely different content. Point (d) of the Code is not repealed, point 7.(1) of the procedure, which defines the special database by reference to Article 169(4) as a whole, is not amended, and the footnote to the new schedule in Annex no. 4 still sends the inspector to mention „dispozițiile art. 169 alin. (4) lit. a)-d)”. A company with discrepancies between its own form 394 and those of its partners cannot establish from the text whether or not it still falls into the special database, and on the answer to that question depends whether its refund is paid directly or after a prior inspection.

Editorial analysis

The order solves a real problem. Until this order, the department working on the return had no instrument with which to stop a refund it viewed with mistrust, because the risk had to be established by somebody else and sent over in a report. That is where both the delays and the refunds reversed late came from. The order gives it written criteria and a form. The price paid for that, however, is visible in the same text, and whoever looks for it finds it on three levels: in who is looked at, in how things are measured, and in who answers to whom.

On the first level the arithmetic is simple. The 14 items of Annex no. 6 break down into 24 tests, because item 14 has 11 points. Of these, 11 concern the company’s suppliers, and 3, that is items 1, 2 and 4, concern the shareholders, the members and the directors, or other companies belonging to the same people. That leaves 10 tests which look at what the company has actually done with its own VAT. In other words, fewer than half of the criteria by which it is decided whether a company gets its money now or after a check describe the conduct of that company.

On the second level, the text does not measure. The word „semnificativ”, significant, appears seven times in the annex: a significant impact on the amount claimed, a significant increase compared with earlier claims, a significantly higher value in e-Factura than in the return, a significant proportion of the deductible VAT coming from one supplier. None of these occurrences has a threshold. The comparison is made with the order’s own reference act: Article 169(4)(c) of the Tax Procedure Code, which the order cites dozens of times, requires differences of more than 10% of the amount refunded, but not less than 50,000 lei. The legislator knew how to write a threshold where it wanted one. In the annex the threshold is missing everywhere, and the decision is left to the judgement of the official who draws up the report.

On the third level lies the relationship between the time limits. The order requires the company to challenge within 45 days, on pain of forfeiture, and triples the administration’s time limit for the first stage, from 5 to 15 working days. For a return filed on Friday, 25 September 2026, that moves the end of the stage from 2 October to 16 October, that is 21 calendar days out of the 45 which Article 77 of the Tax Procedure Code gives for settling the whole claim. Before, the same stage used up 7 calendar days, less than a sixth of the time limit. In the same act, the only short time limit the administration had imposed on itself, the one at point 74, of one day at most in which to inform the company how its claim had been settled, is repealed, and the obligation passes to the collection department with no time limit at all. The taxpayer’s time limit stays where it was, two of the administration’s time limits move, and both move in the same direction.

That leaves the date. The order was signed on 21 September 2026, published on 28 September and applies to the August returns, whose filing deadline fell on 25 September. Seven days passed between signature and publication, and in the middle of them fell precisely the day on which companies filed the returns that will be judged under the new rules. Publishing it three days earlier would have cost nothing and would have made the discussion about retroactive application pointless.

What should be changed

  • Numerical thresholds for every occurrence of the word „semnificativ”, significant. A percentage and a minimum amount, on the model of Article 169(4)(c) of the Tax Procedure Code. The company could check for itself, before filing, whether or not it falls into the risk situation, and the reports would become verifiable in a challenge.
  • Notification of the document entering the company in the special database. Today the company learns that it has been entered only from the consequence, that is from the fact that its return has been sent to an inspection. A copy of the approved report, notified within the same time limit as the decisions, would give it something to challenge.
  • A time limit for notifying how the claim has been settled. Point 74, now repealed, provided for one day at most. The new point 72.(1) moves the task to the collection department and does not say by when. Reintroducing the time limit would close the gap created by this very order.
  • An express clarification about Article 169(4)(d). Either the procedure says who notifies the discrepancies between forms 394 and 390 VIES and by what route, or the reference in the footnote to the schedule is corrected. Today the text supports both, and the outcome differs for the same company.
  • Application only to returns filed after publication. Today’s text catches the August returns, filed before the order existed. Wording that tied the new rules to the date of filing rather than to the tax period would leave untouched the files drawn up under the rules in force on that date.
  • Separate numbering for the annexes to the order and those to the procedure. After this order there are, in the same text, an Annex no. 6 to the order, with the risk situations, and an Annex no. 6 to the procedure, with the schedule. The same goes for Annexes nos. 4 and 5. Every reference has to be read with the qualifier attached to it, and a single omission changes the document you arrive at.

Original text of the legal act

The text below is reproduced in Romanian, the official form of publication.

The full text, as published in the Official Gazette of Romania

Official Gazette of Romania no. 823 of 28 September 2026, pages 4-16 16 pages PDF, 159 KB the act starts on page 4

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This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. For specific situations, consult a licensed attorney or tax advisor.