ROMANIA Law and Practice Contributed by: Alexandru Stanescu, Simina Negulescu, Anca Popan and Mihai-Cristian Huială, Lexters
General EU sustainable finance obligations may also apply if the relevant entity or product falls within the Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation, the Tax- onomy Regulation or the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive. These rules apply because of the status of the entity, the nature of the financial product or the reporting perimeter. For Romanian projects, marketing a token as “green”, “sustainable” or “ESG compliant” should be support- ed by evidence, methodology and disclosures. Oth- erwise, the issue becomes not only an ESG problem, but also a consumer protection and unfair commercial practices problem. 1.2.4 Tax Income and Corporate Tax Romanian tax law provides that, for individuals, gains from transactions with virtual currency are treated as income from other sources. From 1 January 2026, the income tax rate on virtual currency gains is 16%. The small-gain exemption applies where the gain does not exceed RON200 per transaction and total annual gains do not exceed RON600. Health insurance con- tributions may also apply if annual income exceeds the statutory thresholds. Practical guidance is available in ANAF’s 2023 brochure on the tax treatment of virtual currency transfers, which walks individuals through declaration and payment, and – on the reporting side – ANAF’s guide for Reporting Crypto-Asset Service Providers, which sets out customer due diligence and reporting obligations applicable to exchanges from fiscal year 2026. From a practical perspective, the main issue is not so much whether the income is taxable but rather how the taxable gain is evidenced. Taxpayers should keep transaction exports, wallet records, acquisition costs, disposal values, exchange rates, fees and evidence of transfers between their own wallets. This is particu- larly important where assets are moved across several exchanges or self-custody wallets. For companies, crypto-asset transactions are ana- lysed under ordinary corporate tax or microenterprise tax rules, depending on the taxpayer’s status. The rel- evant points are accounting classification, valuation, impairment, exchange rate treatment, timing of recog-
nition and supporting documents for acquisition cost. Romanian accounting and tax guidance remains lim- ited, so the tax treatment should be checked against the exact role of the asset in the business. VAT Treatment Fiat-to-crypto exchange services are generally treat- ed as VAT-exempt where the crypto-asset is used as a means of payment. By contrast, NFT sales, utility tokens and tokenised service bundles may fall within VAT if they represent the supply of digital content, a licence, access to a platform or another identifiable service. Mining and some airdrops may fall outside VAT where there is no identifiable recipient and no direct consideration, but pool mining, staking-as-a- service, validator services and DeFi yield products should be reviewed more carefully, because a fee, reward split or platform intermediation may create a Romanian insolvency law applies to crypto-asset firms in the same way as to other businesses, supplement- ed by the specific safeguards that MiCA imposes on CASPs, ART issuers and EMT issuers. MiCA’s advance safeguarding requirements – client asset segregation, custody agreements, client position records and, for certain issuers, recovery and redemption planning – significantly strengthen the position of clients and counterparties in an insolvency scenario compared to the pre-MiCA environment. The central insolvency question for Romanian crypto-asset companies is whether client crypto-assets belong to the insolvent estate or remain client property. The 2025 Romanian analysis correctly noted that MiCA touches insolvency indirectly, mainly through advance safeguarding obli- gations rather than through a full insolvency code for digital asset companies. taxable service. 1.2.5 Insolvency Practical questions around wallet identification, key access, transaction tracing, asset valuation and tokenholder classification have not yet been exten- sively tested in Romanian insolvency proceedings. 1.2.6 Industry and Trade Bodies The same organisations mentioned in 1.1.5 Industry and Trade Bodies are relevant, but none of them has a recognised self-regulatory function similar to an
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