In brief

  • Between 2012 and 2015, the halving of the tax for seaside hotels went only to those kept open for at least six months a year, and the Constitutional Court has confirmed that the rule is constitutional. Decision no. 648 of 25 November 2025 was published on 22 September 2026 and is generally binding from that date.
  • Seaside town halls win, the hotelier who worked only a short season loses. The plea was raised by a company from Mamaia that was asking for the exact opposite: that the relief should go to those who use the property a few months a year, precisely because that is the only time they take money in. The Court replied that the legislature alone decides who gets a tax relief and on what conditions, so the unconstitutionality argument can no longer be used in the cases still pending.
  • For anyone paying local taxes today, the decision changes nothing, because the provision no longer exists anywhere. From 2016 the rule moved into Article 456(4) and Article 464(4) of the new Tax Code, with the condition turned on its head, and from 1 January 2026 Law no. 239/2025 removed those texts as well. No building and no land used for tourism now receives the 50% reduction.
Act: Decision no. 648 of 25 November 2025 on the plea of unconstitutionality of the provisions of Article 285(2) of Law no. 571/2003 on the Tax Code
Published: Official Gazette of Romania, Part I, no. 803 of 22 September 2026
In force from: the decision is generally binding from the date of publication, 22 September 2026

The Constitutional Court unanimously dismissed the plea raised by MG Tour S.R.L. of Mamaia, Constanța County, against Article 285(2) of the old Tax Code, in the form applicable between 2012 and 2015. It is one more decision in which the constitutional court leaves it to Parliament and the Government to answer the question of who gets a tax relief and who is left out, after the one in which it held that companies cannot be exempted from the court stamp duty. The provision called into question is reproduced in the decision itself and read as follows: „The building tax and the tax on the land beneath those buildings are reduced by 50% for properties situated on the Black Sea coast held by legal persons and used for the provision of tourism services for a period of at least 6 months in a calendar year.”

To obtain the reduction, an owner had to tick three conditions at once. The property had to be situated on the Black Sea coast, so a hotel in Sinaia or a guesthouse in Maramureș fell outside the provision, however seasonal its business might be. The owner had to be a legal person, so anyone holding the property as a natural person had no claim. And the property had to be used for tourism services for at least six months in a calendar year, that is half a year or more. The 50% reduction applied both to the building tax and to the tax on the land beneath it, and anyone who did not reach the six months paid the full tax on both.

The company from Mamaia argued that this threshold turns the purpose of the relief upside down. On its reasoning, the help should have gone to owners who use the property only a few months a year and take money in only during those months, not to those who work all year round and have steady revenue. The argument was built on two articles of the Constitution: Article 56(2), which requires the system of levies to ensure the fair distribution of the tax burden, and Article 1(5), which requires the law to be clear, precise and predictable. The author of the plea also pointed out that in the 2012-2015 period the rule had become, in practice, a rule without an addressee: whoever worked under six months did not qualify, and whoever worked all year had no reason to be helped.

The road to the Court was long and roundabout. The main case was an application for the annulment of tax administrative acts concerning the building tax and the land tax, pending before the Constanța Court of Appeal, Second Civil, Administrative and Tax Litigation Division, in case file no. 1.232/118/2017. That court dismissed the request for referral to the Constitutional Court as inadmissible, and the High Court of Cassation and Justice, Administrative and Tax Litigation Division, allowed the appeal and sent the plea on through Decision no. 6.841 of 16 December 2020. At the Constitutional Court, the case was given file number 1.355D/2021. The presidents of the two Chambers of Parliament, the Government and the Ombudsman sent no observations.

The Court’s answer rests on an old and settled line of case law. In Decision no. 607 of 12 June 2012 it had already held that the legislature „has the right to set the level of taxes and duties and to choose to grant exemptions or exclusions from these obligations in favour of certain categories of taxpayer and for certain periods of time”, according to circumstances and to the economic state of the country. In Decision no. 760 of 5 November 2015 it had shown that no constitutional rule prohibits the granting of tax reliefs to categories of taxpayer, or the setting of the conditions under which they are granted or withdrawn. On the clarity of the law, the Court referred to Decision no. 363 of 7 May 2015 and concluded that the contested provision was clear enough for those it addressed to be able to adjust their conduct to it.

A procedural detail explains why the Court ruled on a provision taken off the statute book ten years ago. As far back as Decision no. 766 of 15 June 2011 it held that provisions whose legal effects continue to be produced after they cease to be in force may also be reviewed. Taxes established between 2012 and 2015 are still adjudicated under the law of that time, so the repealed provision was still alive in the case file at Constanța.

What it changes in practice

The decision is final and generally binding from publication, that is from 22 September 2026. The act sets no other date, and Article 147(4) of the Constitution ties the binding force of the Court’s decisions precisely to the moment of publication in the Official Gazette of Romania, Part I.

The first effect is felt by the case that produced the plea. The appeal before the Constanța Court of Appeal continues to be heard on the merits, with the provision left standing as written. The company from Mamaia can still put forward any other defence, for instance that it did in fact reach the six months of use, but it can no longer argue that the threshold itself is unconstitutional.

The second effect concerns anyone who still has, in 2026, an open dispute over local taxes for the years 2012-2015 on a seaside tourist property. No avenue for reimbursement opens up and no time limit reopens. Anyone who paid the full tax because they kept the hotel open for less than six months is stuck with the payment made, and seaside town halls have no recalculation to do.

The third effect is the one that is missing. For an owner paying local taxes today, the decision changes absolutely nothing, because neither the contested provision nor its successor is still in force. Anyone looking in today’s Tax Code for a reduction for buildings used seasonally for tourism will find none.

What has changed compared with the previous situation

The rule was turned on its head twice, and then disappeared altogether. In the 2003 Tax Code, published in the Official Gazette of Romania, Part I, no. 927 of 23 December 2003, Article 285(2) read as follows: „The building tax and the land tax are reduced by 50% for those buildings and the land attached to them held by legal persons, which are used exclusively for the provision of tourism services for a period of no more than 5 months in the course of a calendar year.” The help therefore went to short activity, not to long, and it was granted anywhere in the country, not only at the seaside. The period was later extended to six months, still as an upper limit.

The reversal came through Government Ordinance no. 30/2011, published in the Official Gazette of Romania, Part I, no. 627 of 2 September 2011. Point 88 of Article I rewrote the paragraph, and Article II(1) of the same ordinance provided that the change would apply from 1 January 2012, since point 88 does not appear on any list of exceptions. From that day, the maximum became a minimum and the scope narrowed to the Black Sea coast. The author of the plea pointed out that the change is explained neither in the explanatory note to the ordinance nor in the statement of reasons for the approving law, and the Court did not contradict that observation.

The present-day counterpart of the provision is, in fact, an absence, and the road there has three steps. First: Law no. 227/2015, published in the Official Gazette of Romania, Part I, no. 688 of 10 September 2015, repealed the old Tax Code and brought back, from 1 January 2016, the logic that applied before 2011. Article 456(4) and Article 464(4) granted the 50% reduction for buildings and land belonging to natural and legal persons used for tourism services of a seasonal nature, „for a period of no more than 6 months in the course of a calendar year”, anywhere in the country, with the reduction applied in the following tax year.

Second step: Law no. 230/2020, published in the Official Gazette of Romania, Part I, no. 1030 of 4 November 2020 and in force from 1 January 2021, removed the word „seasonal” from both provisions and replaced the six months with „no more than 180 consecutive or cumulative days”. The change was requested by tourism operators in the middle of the pandemic, and the disputes that followed reached the High Court of Cassation and Justice, which, by Decision no. 41 of 22 May 2023, published in the Official Gazette of Romania, Part I, no. 620 of 7 July 2023, dismissed as inadmissible the request for clarification of the two paragraphs.

The third step closes the story. Law no. 239/2025, published in the Official Gazette of Romania, Part I, no. 1160 of 15 December 2025, rewrote through Article XII point 26 paragraph (4) of Article 456, giving it an entirely different content, and repealed through point 37 paragraph (4) of Article 464. Both changes apply from 1 January 2026. The result, verifiable in the consolidated text of the Tax Code, is that the title on local taxes and duties no longer contains any reduction linked to the use of a property for tourism services. The only door left open is the general one: local councils may decide on exemptions or reductions, but only for the categories exhaustively listed in Article 456(2) and Article 464(2), and tourism is not among them.

Advantages and disadvantages

What it improves

  • It closes an uncertainty almost six years old. Between the referral of 16 December 2020 and the publication of the decision, 2,106 days passed in which the Constanța case could not be fully heard, and the outcome was unknown both to the town hall and to the company.
  • Seaside local budgets escape the risk of a string of reimbursements. Had the provision fallen, any owner of a tourist property who paid the full tax in the 2012-2015 period would have had grounds for reopening the liability.
  • It confirms a rule useful beyond this case: a tax relief is granted and withdrawn by the legislature, according to economic conditions, and the constitutional court does not rewrite the criteria for granting it, however debatable they may be.
  • It reproduces the contested provision in full, with its cumulative conditions, which makes the decision directly usable in old cases, without having to reconstruct the historical wording of the Tax Code.

What remains a problem

  • It says nowhere what applies today. The decision merely notes that Law no. 571/2003 was repealed by Law no. 227/2015, without showing that the reduction reappeared in Article 456(4) and Article 464(4) and without saying that it vanished on 1 January 2026. The reader is left with the impression that the rule might still be in force, in one form or another.
  • It leaves untouched the question that really stings. The Court answers that the legislature may choose the criteria, but it does not examine whether the restriction to the Black Sea coast has any justification, even though that was half of the criticism. Anyone who owned a seasonal hotel elsewhere in the country does not learn why they were treated differently.
  • Publication came 301 days after the ruling, that is almost ten months. During that time the solution existed but produced no effects, and the trial court could not apply it.
  • The clarity argument is rejected by a reference to paragraphs of a decision about tax evasion, without the passage invoked being reproduced. Anyone who wants to check has to open a 2015 edition of the Official Gazette of Romania (Monitorul Oficial).

Practical advice

  1. If you have an open dispute over local taxes for the years 2012-2015 on a seaside tourist property, move your defence from constitutional ground to factual ground. The only discussion still worth having is whether the property was actually used for tourism services for at least six months in the year concerned.
  2. The six months are proved with documents, not with statements: the classification certificate, the register of guests, the utility invoices for the season months, the payroll records. The local tax authority looks at actual use, not at the period in which the establishment could have operated.
  3. Do not apply today for the 50% reduction for a property used in tourism, wherever it is. From 1 January 2026 the provision no longer exists, either for buildings or for land, and an application filed now will be rejected as groundless.
  4. Check instead the decision of your own local council. The optional exemptions and reductions under Article 456(2) and Article 464(2) of the Tax Code are granted only if a local council has voted for them, with the supporting documents filed within the time limit set in the decision and with the previous year’s tax paid on time.
  5. When reading a decision of the Constitutional Court on a tax provision, look first at the period indicated in the title or in the first paragraph. Here, „in the form in force in the 2012-2015 period” confines everything that follows to four closed tax years, even though the decision appears in 2026.
  6. For the taxes of the years in dispute, reconstruct the wording of the law as it stood then, not as it stands today. The consolidated text you find on the legislative portal shows the current position, and for the old years you need the edition of the Official Gazette of Romania in which the amendment then applicable was published.

Frequently asked questions

What, in short, did the Constitutional Court decide?
It dismissed the plea as unfounded and held that Article 285(2) of Law no. 571/2003, in the form applicable between 2012 and 2015, is constitutional in relation to the criticisms put forward. The decision was taken unanimously.
Can I still apply today for the 50% reduction for a hotel used only in summer?
No. The reduction existed in Article 456(4) and Article 464(4) of Law no. 227/2015 until 31 December 2025. From 1 January 2026, through Law no. 239/2025, the first provision was rewritten with different content and the second was repealed. Today’s Tax Code contains no tax reduction linked to the use of a property for tourism services.
Why did the Court examine a provision repealed ten years ago?
Because its legal effects continue to be produced. Local taxes owed for the years 2012-2015 are determined under the law then in force, and disputes started in that period are still being heard today. The rule comes from Decision no. 766 of 15 June 2011 of the same Court.
From what day does the decision take effect?
From 22 September 2026, the date of publication in the Official Gazette of Romania, Part I, no. 803. The decision sets no other date, and Article 147(4) of the Constitution ties its generally binding force to publication.
How long did the procedure take?
The High Court of Cassation and Justice referred the matter to the Constitutional Court on 16 December 2020, and the decision was delivered on 25 November 2025, that is after 1,805 days, almost 4 years and 11 months. Another 301 days passed until publication. In total, from referral to publication, 2,106 days, that is 5 years and 9 months. The main case file, the one before the Constanța Court of Appeal, bears a 2017 number.
Does this mean I can claim back the tax paid between 2012 and 2015?
No. An avenue for reimbursement would have opened only if the provision had been declared unconstitutional, and the Court decided the other way. The payments made remain owed, and final judgments delivered on this provision remain untouched.
Did a mountain hotel get the same reduction in the 2012-2015 period?
No. In that period the provision applied only to properties situated on the Black Sea coast. From 2016, under the new Tax Code, the location condition disappeared and the reduction became available anywhere in the country, including for natural persons, until it was taken out of the law on 1 January 2026.

Editorial analysis

The most telling figure in this case does not show up on a straight reading of the decision, because nobody writes it there. The contested provision was in force for 1,461 days, from 1 January 2012 to 31 December 2015, that is exactly four years. Reviewing its constitutionality took longer than its life: 1,805 days from the referral by the High Court, on 16 December 2020, to the ruling of 25 November 2025, and 2,106 days until publication. In other words, from referral to publication 645 days more passed than the provision was ever applied. And the main case file bears a 2017 number, which pushes the start of the story back another three years.

The second observation emerges from overlaying two calendars that never meet in the text. The decision was delivered on 25 November 2025 and explains at length that the legislature alone may grant and withdraw tax reliefs. Twenty days later, on 15 December 2025, the legislature did exactly that: through Article XII points 26 and 37 of Law no. 239/2025 it emptied Article 456(4) of content and repealed Article 464(4), that is the direct successors of the provision under review. On 1 January 2026, 37 days after the ruling, the reduction for tourism services had disappeared from the Tax Code. The decision published in September 2026 explains a mechanism that, at the moment of publication, no longer had any object in live legislation. None of this appears in the text, although one sentence would have sufficed.

The third observation concerns the clarity criticisms. The answer was that the 2012 provision was clear enough, and rightly so: the three cumulative conditions can be read in a single sentence. Except that the provision that followed it, the one in Law no. 227/2015 as amended by Law no. 230/2020, proved so unclear that a court of appeal asked the High Court for a preliminary ruling on its meaning. The referral was dismissed as inadmissible by Decision no. 41 of 22 May 2023, but the fact that it existed shows where the problem moved: not to the six-month threshold, but to the question of whether the short duration has to be natural or can also be forced by circumstances. A comparison would have been in order here, since the two provisions govern the same relief.

Finally, a drafting slip that we have not put in the errata, because it does not change the outcome and does not touch the Court’s grounds. In paragraph 3, the submissions of the public prosecutor are summarised as concerning „Article 52(2) of the Constitution”, although Article 52(2) says that the limits of the right of a person aggrieved by a public authority are set by organic law and has nothing to do with tax burdens. From the context it is clear that Article 56(2) is meant, the provision invoked by the author of the plea and analysed further by the Court in paragraphs 16 and 18.

What should be changed

  • A decision on a repealed provision should say, in one sentence, what applies today in its place. The repeal is noted in any event, in paragraph 13; one extra line showing the counterpart in the new law and its status on the date of publication would spare every reader a reconstruction of the article’s history, with all the risk of getting it wrong.
  • The interval between ruling and publication should be capped by an express rule. Here there were 301 days in which the solution existed but produced no effects, and the trial court could not apply it. A time limit of 30 or 60 days from the ruling, written into Law no. 47/1992, would make predictable the moment when cases suspended in practice can move on.
  • The reference in paragraph 3 to Article 52(2) of the Constitution should be put right by a corrigendum. The procedure exists and is published in the same Official Gazette of Romania, and it costs half a column. Otherwise the text stays in the databases and in citations with a reference that leads nowhere.
  • Where a decision rests its solution on paragraphs of an earlier decision, the passage should be reproduced, not merely numbered. Here the reference is to paragraphs 16-20 and 26 of Decision no. 363 of 7 May 2015, a decision about the offence of withholding and failing to pay over taxes, that is an entirely different field. A two-line quotation would show at once what exactly is being taken over.
  • An act that removes a tax relief should also say what happens to those who had already met the condition. Law no. 239/2025 emptied Article 456(4) and repealed Article 464(4) among dozens of other points, without a single sentence about what happens to owners who had met the condition in 2025 and were waiting for the reduction in the following tax year, as the repealed provision itself laid down.

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. 803 of 22 September 2026, pages 2-3 16 pages PDF, 111 KB the act starts on page 2

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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.