Employment cost 2026 · Codul Fiscal art. 138, 156, 220^3
What a hire
actually costs.
Romania loads almost the entire social-contribution burden onto the employee's gross. The employer's own marginal cost above it is a single line, CAM at 2.25%. The number founders underestimate is not the rate — it is the gap between what the company pays and what the employee actually receives.
Total cost to the company
RON 0
Per employee, per month, gross plus CAM.
Below the statutory floor
—
- Gross salary
- RON 0
- CAS 25%, withheld from gross
- RON 0
- CASS 10%, withheld from gross
- RON 0
- Income tax 10% of the base after CAS and CASS
- RON 0
- Net in the employee's hand
- RON 0
- CAM 2.25%, employer-borne, on top of gross
- RON 0
- Total cost to the company
- RON 0
The gap
—
At this headcount
—
Method and assumptions
- CAS (25%) and CASS (10%) are withheld from the gross salary. Codul Fiscal art. 138 and art. 156.
- Income tax at a flat 10% applies to the base remaining after CAS and CASS. Codul Fiscal art. 64.
- Not modelled: the monthly personal deduction (deducerea personală), which reduces the income-tax base only, varies with dependants, and phases out as gross rises — it is largest at the bottom of the scale and irrelevant well above the minimum wage. Also not modelled: the temporary RON exemption slice available on minimum-wage contracts through parts of 2026, which is narrow, contract-specific, and changes with each amending ordinance.
- CAM at 2.25% is the only levy the employer pays above the gross. Codul Fiscal art. 220^3. There is no employer social-security ceiling and no sector-variable employer rate to model.
- The minimum gross wage in force on 1 January 2026 is RON 4,050, rising to RON 4,325 from 1 July 2026. This tool floors its warning on the January figure; a contract signed for the second half of the year should use RON 4,325 as the floor instead.
- Excluded throughout: the fourteenth-month and holiday-pay conventions some sectors apply, payroll administration (a licensed accountant, monthly D112 filing, REVISAL updates), and the occupational-medicine check. These are real and non-optional but sit outside the gross-to-net arithmetic.
- Figures last verified against statute on 2026-07-22.
An estimate, not a payroll run. Your actual net pay depends on the personal deduction, dependants, and any exemption applicable to the specific contract. Confirm the figures with your accountant before you offer a number.
The employee condition
Not a discount.
A ticket of entry.
At least 1 full-time employee is a condition of eligibility for the microenterprise regime, not a lever that changes the rate. A company with no employee does not pay a higher turnover rate — it falls outside the regime entirely and pays 16% standard corporate income tax on profit instead of 1% on turnover.
The former 3% band that some guidance still describes for companies without an employee was abolished from 1 January 2026 by OUG nr. 89/2025. There is no rate below 16% available to a company outside the regime. The employee cost calculated above is, for a great many founders, the price of the 1% rate — and where the founder is the employee, the salary is their own extraction rather than a dead-weight overhead.
The microenterprise calculator models that trade-off directly: turnover, margin, and the employer cost from this page, side by side against standard CIT.
Disclaimer
These are estimates produced from statutory rates in force for 2026 and the figures you entered. They are not payroll advice and cannot be relied on for a contract of employment. Your actual net figure depends on the personal deduction, dependants, any minimum-wage exemption applicable to the contract, and sectoral minimums that exceed the general floor. Rates in the Romanian Fiscal Code move by emergency ordinance, sometimes with days of notice.