In brief

  • The VAT differences and the related accessory obligations established by tax assessment decisions against companies whose VAT number was cancelled ex officio are written off, for the tax periods from 1 January 2019 until the law enters into force.
  • Also cancelled is the VAT deducted by agricultural cooperatives on purchases of machinery, for the periods from 9 January 2024 onwards.
  • Anyone who has already paid these amounts can claim them back, and the limitation period for the refund only starts running on the date the law enters into force.
Act: Law no. 177/2026
Published: Official Gazette of Romania (Monitorul Oficial) no. 700 of 24 August 2026
In force from: 27 August 2026

Companies that lost their VAT number and later received a tax assessment decision for output VAT no longer have to pay it, and those who have already paid can ask for their money back. Law no. 177/2026 on the cancellation of certain tax obligations, published in Official Gazette of Romania no. 700 of 24 August 2026, wipes off the books a category of debt that had been building up since 2019 and, at the same time, repairs the position of agricultural cooperatives penalised for the VAT they deducted when buying machinery. The law was promulgated by Decree no. 730/2026 and enters into force three days after publication. It belongs to the family of measures through which Parliament corrects unwanted tax effects, as in the case of the pension recalculation rules recently confirmed by the Constitutional Court.

Accountants know the situation well. When the tax authority cancels a company’s VAT registration ex officio, in the cases set out in Article 316(11)(a), (d) and (e) of the Tax Code, the company still remains liable, under Article 11(6) or (8), to pay VAT on the supplies of goods and services made during the period when it had no valid number, with no right of deduction. The result was a tax assessment decision for a tax that the company, in most cases, had never collected from its customers.

The law also covers older situations, in which the number was cancelled under the previous Tax Code, Law no. 571/2003, on the basis of Article 153(9)(a), (b), (d) and (e).

A recent ANAF order reaches a similar result by another route: companies that do not file the 300 VAT return automatically receive an assessment cutting half of their input VAT.

What it changes in practice

The first effect is the write-off itself. Differences in principal tax obligations representing VAT, together with the related accessory tax obligations, established by a tax assessment decision issued and communicated to the taxpayer, are cancelled for the tax periods between 1 January 2019 and the date the law enters into force.

The second effect concerns agricultural cooperatives. The VAT differences and the accessory obligations established against cooperatives set up under Agricultural Cooperation Law no. 566/2004, representing the tax on purchases of agricultural machinery for which they had exercised their right of deduction, are cancelled for the tax periods between 9 January 2024 and the date the law enters into force.

The third effect is the refund. Amounts extinguished by any of the means provided for in Article 22 of the Tax Procedure Code, that is paid, set off or recovered through enforcement, are refunded to taxpayers. The refund is not automatic, it is made at the taxpayer’s request, and the limitation period for the right to claim it only starts running on the date the law enters into force.

The fourth effect is that no further assessments are issued for those periods. The tax authority no longer issues tax assessment decisions for obligations of this kind relating to the periods covered by the law, neither for the interval starting in 2019, nor for the one starting in 2024 in the case of cooperatives.

The fifth effect is procedural and spares the taxpayer a trip to the tax office. The cancellation is carried out ex officio by the competent tax authority, by issuing a decision cancelling the tax obligations, which is communicated to the taxpayer. No application has to be filed for the cancellation, only for the refund.

The sixth effect concerns decisions still in progress. If the tax authority issued but did not communicate such a tax assessment decision before the law entered into force, it no longer communicates it, and the obligations are removed from the taxpayer’s analytical record on the basis of a write-off statement.

What has changed compared with the previous situation

Until now, a company that lost its VAT number remained liable for the tax on the transactions carried out in that period, even if it had not collected the tax from its customers and even if it had since reactivated its number. The law abolishes those amounts over an interval of more than seven years.

The second change concerns agricultural cooperatives, where the problem was a different one. They had exercised their right of deduction for agricultural machinery, and the tax authority later challenged that deduction through assessment decisions. The law cancels those differences, starting from 9 January 2024.

The third change is about time limits. Normally, the right to claim back an amount paid to the tax authority lapses five years after 1 January of the year following the one in which it arose. Here, the law restarts the clock: the period runs from the date it enters into force, so nobody loses the right because the payment was made long ago.

The fourth change is the clear limit of the benefit. The law does not apply to obligations relating to transactions for which the taxpayer stated VAT separately on invoices or on equivalent documents, or collected the tax from the recipients, in full or in part, where the tax authority finds this to be the case. Anyone who collected the VAT from the customer still owes it.

What does not change are the substantive rules on the cancellation of the VAT number. Article 316(11) of the Tax Code and Article 11(6) and (8) remain in force, so the mechanism will work in the same way from now on. The law deals only with the past.

Advantages and disadvantages

What it improves

  • It wipes out VAT debts built up since 2019 by companies that had not collected the tax from their customers.
  • The cancellation is made ex officio, so the taxpayer does not have to file any application to be rid of the amount.
  • It restarts the limitation period for refunds, which saves the right of those who paid several years ago.
  • It settles the specific problem of agricultural cooperatives penalised for the VAT deducted on machinery.
  • It stops the issuing and the communication of assessment decisions still being prepared for the same periods.

What remains a problem

  • Amounts already paid are not refunded automatically, only at the taxpayer’s request, so anyone who does not hear about the law gets nothing.
  • The actual procedure only appears in an order of the president of the National Agency for Fiscal Administration, within 30 days of entry into force.
  • Anyone who stated VAT separately on invoices or collected the tax from the recipients falls entirely outside the benefit, even if the tax was collected only in part.
  • The mechanism that generates these debts stays in the Tax Code, so the same situation can arise again for the periods that follow.
  • The law provides no interest on the refunded amounts, even though taxpayers advanced the money to the State for years on end.

Practical advice

  1. Check your taxpayer record to see whether you have a VAT assessment decision issued after your number was cancelled. Only amounts established by a tax assessment decision fall under the law.
  2. If you have already paid, file a refund application. The cancellation is made ex officio, but the money comes back only on request.
  3. Do not rush to file the application before the order of the president of the National Agency for Fiscal Administration is published. The procedure is due within 30 days of entry into force and will set out the form and the documents needed.
  4. Check whether you issued invoices with VAT stated separately during that period. If you did, those transactions stay outside the cancellation and an application covering them will be rejected.
  5. If you are an agricultural cooperative, gather the documents on machinery purchases and on the deductions exercised from 9 January 2024 onwards. That is the interval covered in your case.
  6. If you have pending court proceedings against such an assessment decision, tell the court about the law at the first hearing. The subject matter of the dispute may change substantially.
  7. Check as well whether a decision has been issued but not communicated to you. In that case nothing further is communicated, and the amount is removed from the record on the basis of a write-off statement.

Frequently asked questions

Who benefits from the cancellation?
Taxpayers whose VAT registration was cancelled in the cases set out in Article 316(11)(a), (d) and (e) of the Tax Code, or in Article 153(9)(a), (b), (d) and (e) of the previous Tax Code, and against whom the tax authority subsequently established VAT differences and accessory obligations through a tax assessment decision.
Which periods are covered?
The tax periods between 1 January 2019 and the date the law enters into force, for the situations involving cancellation of the VAT number, and between 9 January 2024 and the same date for agricultural cooperatives set up under Law no. 566/2004.
Do I have to file an application for my debt to be cancelled?
No. The cancellation is carried out ex officio by the competent tax authority, through a decision cancelling the tax obligations, which is communicated to you. An application is needed only if you want a refund of the amounts already paid.
I have already paid. Will I get the money back?
Yes, on request. Amounts extinguished by any of the means provided for in Article 22 of the Tax Procedure Code are refunded, and the limitation period for the right to claim the refund starts running on the date the law enters into force.
Are there situations in which the law does not apply?
Yes. The law does not apply to obligations relating to transactions for which you stated VAT separately on invoices or on equivalent documents, or collected the tax from the recipients, in full or in part, if the tax authority finds this to be the case.
When do the actual implementing rules appear?
The procedure is approved by an order of the president of the National Agency for Fiscal Administration, which is issued within 30 days of the date the law enters into force.

Errors and inconsistencies in the published text

  • The two lists of letters do not match, although the law says that it applies „în mod corespunzător”, correspondingly. Paragraph (1) concerns the cancellation of the VAT number carried out under Article 316(11)(a), (d) and (e) of Law no. 227/2015. Paragraph (2) extends the solution to cancellations made under the old code, under Article 153(9)(a), (b), (d) and (e) of Law no. 571/2003. Letter (b) appears only in the second list, and in both codes it covers the same set of facts, temporary inactivity recorded in the Trade Register. The result, as the text stands, is that a taxpayer whose number was cancelled for temporary inactivity before 2016 gets the write-off, while one in exactly the same position after 2016 does not.
  • The tax period running on the date of entry into force is left unsettled. The formula „perioadele fiscale cuprinse între 1 ianuarie 2019 și data intrării în vigoare a prezentei legi”, the tax periods between 1 January 2019 and the date this law enters into force, appears in paragraphs (1), (4) and (8), while the variant with 9 January 2024 appears in paragraphs (3), (5) and (9). The law enters into force on 27 August 2026, in the middle of a month and of a quarter. No paragraph says whether the tax period containing that date falls under the write-off in full, stops on 26 August, or stays outside it altogether. For a taxpayer on a monthly tax period, the ambiguity covers a whole month of VAT.
  • Paragraph (7) rules out a situation that cannot arise in the case covered by paragraph (3). The exclusion targets the transactions for which the taxpayer „a înscris distinct taxa pe valoarea adăugată în facturi sau în documente echivalente ori a colectat, integral sau parțial, taxa pe valoare adăugată de la beneficiari”, stated VAT separately on invoices or on equivalent documents, or collected it from the recipients in full or in part, that is, output tax. Paragraph (3), however, deals with exactly the opposite, input tax, deducted by agricultural cooperatives when buying machinery. Drafted as applying to the law as a whole, the paragraph leaves it unclear whether the filter also catches cooperatives, where it has nothing to bite on.
  • The first cross reference in the law does not identify the act it points to. Paragraph (1) speaks of decisions issued „în aplicarea art. 11 alin. (6) sau alin. (8), după caz”, in application of Article 11(6) or (8), as the case may be, without saying which act that Article 11 belongs to. The name of the act, Law no. 227/2015, appears only a few lines further on, attached to the reference to Article 316. In a law whose operative text fits into a single article, the reader still has to work out for himself which code the first rule refers to.

Editorial analysis

The problem the law repairs is one of those that show up only in the accounts and hurt only in the bank account. A company whose VAT number was cancelled by the tax authority went on owing the tax on the supplies made during the period without a number, with no right of deduction, even though it had collected nothing from its customers. The penalty was out of all proportion to the failure, and the assessment decision that arrived two or three years later turned a reporting omission into a debt that closed the business down. That Parliament has acknowledged this, and retroactively over more than seven and a half years, is a good thing.

The trouble is that the law wipes out the past and leaves the mechanism where it was. Article 11(6) and (8) and Article 316(11) of the Tax Code are untouched, and paragraphs (8) and (9) stop the issuing of decisions only for the periods ending on 27 August 2026. From 28 August, the same rule produces the same assessment decisions, for the same reasons, against the same taxpayers. In a few years another write-off law will be needed, which has happened before: tax amnesty laws have become a recurring instrument precisely because the rule that generates the debt is never touched.

The second observation concerns the two starting dates. Neither 1 January 2019 nor 9 January 2024 is explained in the text, and the reader has nothing from which to work out what happened on those days. The first also has a curious practical effect: for the periods in 2019 and 2020, the right of the tax authority to establish claims had, as a rule, become time barred before 2026, under the five year period in the Tax Procedure Code. For those years the law matters almost exclusively through paragraph (4), that is, through the refund of amounts already paid, not through the write-off. It would have been worth saying so expressly, because it changes entirely what a taxpayer has to look for in his own record.

The third observation is about pace. The cancellation is made ex officio from 27 August, the implementing procedure comes through an order of the president of the National Agency for Fiscal Administration within 30 days, and the law sets no deadline either for issuing the cancellation decisions or for dealing with the refund claims. The only deadline in the whole text is the one given to the tax authority for its own procedure. The taxpayer, for his part, has only paragraph (6), which restarts the limitation period in his favour, so he has time, but no certainty.

What should be changed

  • Aligning the two lists of letters. Adding letter (b) of Article 316(11) to the list in paragraph (1) removes the difference in treatment between the same set of facts occurring before and after 2016. Without that correction, it will be settled one taxpayer at a time, in court.
  • An express rule for the tax period in progress. A single sentence, along the lines of „perioada fiscală în care intră în vigoare prezenta lege se ia în calcul integral”, the tax period in which this law enters into force is taken into account in full, closes an ambiguity that will otherwise be settled by an order of the president of the National Agency for Fiscal Administration, that is, at a level below the one at which it was created.
  • Deadlines for the tax authority, not only for its procedure. A deadline for issuing the cancellation decisions, of the order of 60 days from publication of the order, and a deadline for dealing with the refund claims. As drafted, the law takes effect immediately for the state and at an unspecified date for the taxpayer.
  • Individual notification through the Virtual Private Space. The tax authority already knows who received the assessment decisions concerned and who paid them, because all of it sits in the analytical record kept for each taxpayer. An automatic notice through the taxpayer’s online account with the tax authority, stating the amount written off and the amount refundable, would turn a theoretical right into one actually exercised, instead of leaving it to depend on how quickly each company hears that the law exists.
  • Amending the rule that generates the debt, not merely erasing its effects. Article 11(6) and (8) of the Tax Code ought to exclude from the taxable base the tax that was not actually collected from the recipients, which is exactly the criterion this law uses in paragraph (7) to separate the cases that deserve to be forgiven from those that do not. Otherwise the same files start building up again from 28 August 2026.
  • An explanation of the two starting dates. Either in the law or in the implementing order, with a reference to the event that produced them. A taxpayer checking his record needs to understand why 9 January 2024 and not some other day, all the more so because whether his file falls under the write-off depends on that very date.

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. 700 of 24 August 2026 16 pages PDF, 114 KB the act starts on page 9

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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.