State of Emergency in Romania. What should the companies know?

Today, March 16, 2020, the President of Romania signed the Decree on establishing the state of emergency on the territory of Romania, for a period of 30 days. The President shall request Parliament to approve the measure adopted, within a maximum of 5 days from his issuance date.

Here are some of the measures that have an impact on the economic and social life:

In the economic field:

The press office of the National Health Insurance House published today, on the official website of the institution, a series of recommendations regarding the granting of medical leave and the quarantine payment.

According to the published text, in order to prevent illnesses and to recover the capacity to work, the insured persons can benefit from leave and allowance for quarantine, according to the regulations contained in the Government Emergency Ordinance no. 158/2005 regarding the holidays and indemnities of social health insurance, with the subsequent modifications and completions, as well as in the Norms of application of its provisions, approved by the Order of the Minister of Health and of the president of CNAS no. 15 / 1.311 / 2018, as subsequently amended and supplemented.

In the context created by the coronavirus (COVID19) pandemia, employers play a major role in reducing the risk of employee contamination with the new virus.

Apart of the implementation of additional hygiene measures and the correct information of employees on how to protect themselves, companies can adopt, in the framework of labour relations, solutions that make work schedule and the way of work more flexible.

One of the measures may be the decaling of the work programme, as state Secretary Raed Arafat recommends in the middle of last week.

 As a result of the courses suspension in pre-university education in Romania, between March 11 and March 22, 2020, the public authorities have decided to take measures to help parents who cannot leave their children unattended.

Therefore, the Chamber of Deputies adopted on 12.03.2020, by unanimous vote, the legislative initiative that obliges all employers, both public and private, to grant paid days off to one of the parents in the situation of temporary closure of the schools due to adverse weather conditions or other extreme situations decreed by the competent authorities with responsibilities in the field.

The law also applies to single persons from the single-parent family, to the legal representative of the child and to the person designated to exercise the rights and fulfill the parental obligations towards the child.


Therefore, free days are granted for as long as the authorities decree the closure of schools.

The summer brouth a new Human Resources Manager in Ascent Group’s team. Starting in mid-June, Florina Băbău joined the Ascent Group team to coordinate the human resources activity of the group.

Florina is a graduate of the Faculty of Economic Sciences of the Western University of Timisoara and holds numerous certifications in the field of management and human resources. Being very passionate about learning and discovering new ways of developing people, Florina is currently continuing her education at the School of Psychology and Psychodrama.

Professionally, Florina has over 15 years of experience in human resources, both in multinational and local companies, in various roles such as: Improvement Coordinator, and subsequently Training & Development Coordinator for Leoni Wiring Systems Arad, HR Manager within ARED group, or HR Recruitment & People Development at Coficab Eastern Europe.

On the 21^st of June the Emergency Ordinate number 43/2019 came into force. It brings significant changes to the regulations that have previously governed the construction industry.

Briefly, the changes brought by the EO 43/2019 are based on four pillars. These have implications for the minimum wage in the industry, on the one hand, and for the necessary conditions employers and employees need to fulfil in order to enjoy the financial benefits, on the other.

 I. Minimum wage.

For the period comprised between 01.01.2020 and 31.12.2028, the minimum wage in the construction industry will be 3.000 RON, for a normal work schedule averaging around 167,333 hours per month. This will represent, on average, 17. 938 RON per hour.

Ascent Group continues it’s expansion plans, and July 2019 marks the opening of a new office, in  Piatra Neamț.

The expansion decision is based both on Ascent Group’s strategic plan to be present in all Romanian’s regions and the business potential of Romania’s North-Eastern region, which is growing mainly on the IT&C serivces and shared services centers. An important role in the office opening decision played also identifiction of the right local partner. 

Starting with January 2019, the gross minimum wage will increase and will be differentiated according to the level of education.

The Government approved this week an Emergency Ordinance amending a number of normative acts, including the Labor Code – Law no. 53/2003, and Law no. 279/2005 on apprenticeship at the workplace. Amendments to the Labor Code will come into force on 1st January 2019 and aim to create the legal framework for establishing the minimum gross national salary guaranteed in pay by reference to the criteria for the level of studies.

Initially, the change envisaged differentiation according to the seniority in work, but in the end the Government dropped it, keeping only differentiation according to the level of education.

In case you have heard of Service Design and Design Thinking but do not know exactly what they are, this article is for you.

Have you ever entered a store, hotel or restaurant and felt that something was not entirely how it is supposed to be? That what you are looking for is not in the right place, that it takes too long for you to be served, or that many of the employees’ actions or operations are useless? Have you ever accessed a certain website and felt it was very complicated to find what you were looking for, doing unnecessary mouse movements and countless clicks until you found the button you needed

Have you ever felt that the people inside your organization who provide you with internal services (legal, HR, purchasing, ICT, etc.) do not always respond promptly and efficiently enough to your needs? Or that your whole experience in the organization is far from desired?

The law permitting the payment of dividends during the year was voted. According to the principle “autumn is a time of harvest “, perhaps from September or October this year we will already be able to reap the “fruits” of the business.

On July 12, the normative act (Law 163/2018) amending the dividend payment procedure was published, which allowes the distribution of the profit between the companies’ shareholders also quarterly, within the limit of the net profit realized after the preliminary filing of an interim financial statement .

The European Parliament and the Council of Europe adopted on 27 April 2016 the EU2016 / 679 Regulation on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data. Its provisions will be applicable in all Member States of the European Union as of 25 May 2018.

2017 was a year of business growth and consolidation for Ascent Group, which was confirmed by the reported financial results. With a turnover increase of 14.9%, the group exceeds its own growth forecast, estimated at the beginning of the year at 10%, and for the first time in its history it has reached an annual turnover of EUR 3 million.

Not only the turnover shows a positive development, but all the main indicators of the group registered increases in 2017, respectively all types of services provided by the companies within the group had positive dynamics.

The year 2017 represented also a key year in the recognition of Ascent Group as a global training programs provider. This year, the training and coaching division of the group has won several important international projects, thus engaging in the formation of management teams in different countries in Central and Eastern Europe.

The year 2018 brings changes at all levels, including the General Employee Evidence Register and its submission to ITM via the Reges platform. According to Government Decision no. 905/2017, published on 19 December 2017 in the Official Gazette no. 1005, there are regulations regarding the new deadlines for transmitting changes to the contractual elements.

Thus, in August 2017, a new rule was introduced which stipulated that the change of any contractual clause must be registered and transmitted to ITM no later than one day before the date of its entry into force, in this way removing the provisions of the Labor Code stipulating the period of 20 days.

The year 2018 started with a lot of fiscal changes, contained in various normative acts. This is why we are trying to make a brief recap of the legislative changes that take place this year and a reminder of the main checks and declarations to be made at the beginning of the year:

With the latest tax changes some new information appeared regarding the micro-enterprise regime. They refer to the ceiling up to which a company is consider a micro-company and pays the tax on revenues, not on profits, the extention of this taxation system also to the companies who are now the now excluded, ans also the impossibility of companies with a certain share capital to switch from revenu tax to profit tax. The recent changes also include measures to combat outsourcing of profits made by multinational companies.

According to Government Emergency Ordinance no. 79/2017, published on November 10, starting with 1st of January 2018, will increase the ceiling to which a company becomes a taxpayer on micro-enterprise income, from 500,000 euros (as it is currently) to 1.000.000 euros.

This means that companies with a yearly turnover below 1.000.000 euros will not pay profit tax, but they will pay a 1% tax on the turnover.

The Ordinance no. 79/2017 regarding the amendment of the Fiscal Code approved by the Government on 08.11.2017 was published in the Official Gazette of 10.11.2017. This brings important news for both employees and employers.

The main change is represented by the transfer of contributions from the employer to the employee. Out of the total of 9 contributions currently paid by employers and employees, starting with 2018 there will be only 3 contributions, namely:

Even if it seems hard to believe, in Romania, we will get rid of the stamp requirement!

This provision actually already existed from 2015, when a paragraph of the Law 316 already eliminated the corporate obligation to stamp the claims, declarations or other documents in relation to institutions or public authorities. However, a large proportion of the public sector employees continued to request abusively the application of the stamp on these documents.

In order to improve this situation, on 30 June 2017 it was published in the Official Gazette no. 507 a Government Ordinance that not only reaffirms the lack of stamp obligation, but also qualifies officials`demand to apply the stamp as being abusive.

Thursday, the 20th of July, the Romanian Government adopted a decision through which is the employers will have to pay the CAS and CASS contributions at the level of the minimum wage even for the part-time contracts.

Therefore, under this decision, employers will be required to pay social and health contributions at the level of the minimum wage even in the case of part-time contracts.

The measure is taken even if the salary of the part-time employee, related to the number of hours worked, is lower than the country-guaranteed minimum gross salary. Thus, for example, if the part-time employee earns 600 lei gross, the employer will be obliged to pay the pension and health contribution at the level of the minimum salary of 1450 lei gross.

Starting with 2017 a series of legislative changes will take place. Some are applicable from the 1st of January, the others from the 1st of February. We have grouped them in several main categories:

The corporate income tax:

• The taxpayers engaged exclusively in innovation, research and development activities will be exempted from profit tax in the first 10 years of service;
• Will be extended the deadline for the tax exemption regarding reinvested profit in technological equipment, computers, electronics and peripheral equipment, and also software.

The income tax for microcompanies

The changes in the New Fiscal Code are making 2016 the best year for withdrawing dividends. The dividend tax was reduced from 16% to 5%. It is possible to benefit of this opportunity only in 2016.

If you haven`t already did it, you can still benefit from this tax relief only in December this year.

The only condition that must be fulfilled in order to pay only taxes rate of 5% is that the shareholder must obtain also other income for which he already pays the health insurance contribution. Therefore:

In July  the Law 207/2015 has been published regarding the new Code of tax procedure applicable from 1st of January 2016. As follows:

The new Fiscal Code, adopted in September 2015, brings various of changes, applicable from different data. We will briefly describe below the changes that will be effetive starting with 2016.

Changes in the VAT 

Standard rate of VAT for all goods and services will be reduced from 24% to 19% in two steps: starting from 2016 from 24% to 20% and starting with the 1st of January 2017 will be reduced to 19%.

For the delivery of school textbooks, books, newspapers and magazines, except those intended exclusively or mainly for advertising as well as for the service consisting in allowing acces to the castles, museums, memorial houses, historical monuments, monuments of architecture and monuments of archeology, zoological and botanical gardens, fairs and exhibitions and cultural events, sporting events, cinemas, other than those without the right to deduction it will be applied the reduced rate of VAT to 5%.

This is the time when we all are making plans for the New Year Eve, but did we properly budgeted expenditures for 2016?

And to do this, I propose you to review together the main changes of the new Tax Code and also the new provisions of the Ordinance 50/27.10.2015.

From a first look it’s noted that in 2016 the most vulnerable are individuals who are self-employed or freelancers, and the Fiscal Procedure Code is not meant to solve what really hurts, namely: the introduction of rules and procedural limitations about duration and conduct unannounced checks and anti-fraud, or the removal of the effects on third parties resulting from the declaration as being inactive of a taxpayer.

As it was already announced, starting with the year 2016, the Tax Code will have some changes. Some of them have a direct impact on employees. An amendment provides that the tickets gift in the value of maximum of 150 lei, will no longer be taxed starting with 2016. Another change is linked to the personal deductions.