Non-salary benefits in 2026: the 33% cap, what stays tax-free and what each one really costs

A well-chosen non-salary benefit can reach the employee almost whole, where a pay rise reaches them with less than 60% — and it costs the employer the same. But “benefit” does not mean a single tax regime. The Fiscal Code knows three: vouchers, which are taxed; a “basket” of tax-free benefits capped monthly at 33% of base salary; and a group of tax-free advantages outside the cap. Almost any other advantage an employee receives in cash or in kind is taxed as salary. The rules have moved several times — the biggest changes came on 1 January 2024 and, for pensions, in March 2026 — so the figures in older articles are often wrong. Below you’ll find the map valid at the end of August 2026, what each benefit costs, and how to introduce one without surprises on the payroll.

Three tax regimes, not one

The starting point: everything an employee receives from the employer, in cash or in kind, is salary income, with income tax and contributions — except what the Fiscal Code expressly lists (art. 76). Each benefit below is such an exception, with its own limits.

Regime	What’s in it	What is paid
1. Vouchers	meal vouchers, holiday vouchers, childcare vouchers, cultural vouchers	10% income tax; 10% CASS (health insurance contribution) only on meal and holiday vouchers; no CAS (pension contribution), no CAM (employer’s work insurance contribution)
2. The 33% “basket”	sports subscriptions, health insurance and medical services, pensions, nursery/kindergarten, tourism, food in kind, accommodation	no tax and no contributions, within each benefit’s own limit and the shared monthly cap
3. Outside the cap	gifts up to 300 lei per occasion, social aid (birth, funeral, serious illness), transport to and from work, protective equipment, professional training, per diem within the legal limit	no tax and no contributions, within each one’s limits
Everything else	any other advantage, and the part that exceeds the limits	like salary: income tax, CAS, CASS and CAM

The 33% cap: how it works

Art. 76 para. (4¹) of the Fiscal Code groups a few benefits that, added up per month, are not taxable income up to at most 33% of the base salary for the position held. Three things to keep in mind:

• The base is the base salary in the contract — a gross amount, not the month’s total earnings with bonuses and premiums. With a base salary of 5,000 lei, the cap is 1,650 lei per month.
• There are two tests, not one. Almost every benefit has its own limit (annual, monthly or daily, in euro or in lei; the interest-rate difference has none), and all of them together cannot exceed the monthly 33% cap.
• The order in which benefits are counted against the cap is set by the employer (art. 76 para. 4²).

What exceeds either limit doesn’t disappear from the calculation: it is treated as salary in kind, with income tax, CAS, CASS and CAM (art. 76 para. 3, art. 139, 157 and 220⁴).

Example. Base salary: 5,000 lei, so a cap of 1,650 lei/month. The company pays a gym subscription of 35 lei/month, a medical subscription of 100 lei/month and one child’s nursery, 1,500 lei/month. Total: 1,635 lei — under the cap, and each amount is also under its own limit. In a month when it also reimburses 50 lei for a second medical subscription, the total rises to 1,685 lei: the 35 lei above the cap are taxed as salary.

What’s in the basket, and the limits

Benefit	Own limit	Worth noting
Sports subscriptions	100 euro/year/person	the provider must have CAEN code 9311, 9312 or 9313
Voluntary health insurance and medical services by subscription	400 euro/year/person	the limit is shared by insurance premiums and medical subscriptions
Voluntary pension (pillar III)	400 euro/year/person	the fund or scheme must be those provided by law, managed by authorised entities
Occupational pension	400 euro/year/person	new rule, for income from March 2026 onwards
Placing children in early education (nursery, kindergarten)	at most 1,500 lei/month/child	granted to one parent only, at one employer only, on the basis of a declaration; it is different from childcare vouchers
Tourism and treatment services (including transport, during leave, for the employee and family)	annual cap equal to one average gross wage used to build the state social insurance budget for that year	must be provided for in the contract or regulations; doesn’t apply to those who receive holiday vouchers
Food provided by the employer (canteen, prepared meals — not vouchers)	the maximum value of one meal voucher per day	days of telework, leave or business travel are not counted; doesn’t apply to those who receive meal vouchers
Accommodation or rent	20% of the national minimum gross wage, per month	only if the employee and spouse own or use no home in the locality of work and the accommodation is provided under the conditions in the law
Benefits under a mobility clause	2.5 times the legal per diem for public institutions	use only if the clause is in the contract
Interest-rate difference on loans and deposits	no euro cap	the favourable difference between the negotiated rate and the market rate is also in the basket

The limits for sport, health insurance and pensions are set in euro; the conversion into lei is done by the accountant or the payroll software, under the tax rules. The law attributes amounts to the months for which the payment was made, on the basis of supporting documents (art. 76 para. 9–12: pensions, health insurance and medical subscriptions, sports subscriptions, nursery), and tourism services to the month in which the expense report is approved (para. 8). An annual premium that covers 12 months is, as a rule, spread over those months rather than counted entirely in the month of payment — confirm the classification with your accountant.

Vouchers: outside the basket, with their own taxes

Vouchers are not counted in the 33% cap. They have their own rules:

• Meal vouchers — at most 45 lei per day worked. Under Law 201/2025, the value applies to entitlements from November 2025 and, by derogation from the usual indexation, until the end of September 2026; for the period after that, the maximum value is set by the semi-annual indexation order. 10% CASS on the nominal value and 10% income tax on the remainder are withheld (assuming no personal deduction): about 19% in total, so roughly 81% reaches the employee. No CAS and no CAM are due. The rules on days actually worked are in our article on meal vouchers.
• Holiday vouchers — the same treatment as meal vouchers: 10% income tax and 10% CASS, no CAS and no CAM. They are granted under the special law on holiday vouchers; check its rules before you introduce them.
• Childcare and cultural vouchers — 10% income tax only, with no CASS, CAS or CAM. Their maximum values are set periodically by order, so we don’t list them here.

Don’t confuse them with household activity vouchers, a separate mechanism run through the ANOFM platform.

Tax-free and outside the cap

A few advantages are tax-free and exempt from contributions without entering the 33% basket:

• Gifts in cash, in kind or as gift vouchers, up to 300 lei per person, on each occasion: Easter, Christmas and similar holidays of other faiths (including for employees’ minor children), 8 March for female employees, 1 June for employees’ minor children. What happens above the limit and how to document them: in our article on gifts and gift vouchers.
• Social aid granted to the employee: for birth or adoption, funerals, serious and incurable illness, medical devices, or losses caused to the employee’s own household by natural disasters. It is tax-free and outside the CAS, CASS and CAM bases (art. 76 para. 4 letter a, art. 142 letter b), and the Fiscal Code sets no maximum amount for it. For the company it generally falls within the 5% social-expenses limit (see below); your accountant confirms the classification of each aid.
• Transport to and from the workplace, if provided for in the employment contract or the internal regulations, and travel costs between the locality of residence and that of the workplace, when housing is not provided or rent is not paid.
• Protective and work equipment, mandatory uniforms and other rights related to occupational health and safety. These are employer obligations, not benefits; for medical checks, see our article on occupational medicine.
• Professional training related to the work performed, and the phone subscription used for work duties.
• Business-travel and secondment allowance, within the legal cap — details in our article on per diem.

What has changed, and why you can’t rely on old articles

• 1 January 2024 (Emergency Ordinance 115/2023). The limit for sports subscriptions was reduced to 100 euro per year — if you still find 400 euro, the source is old. The tax-free cap of 400 lei per month for telework was also abrogated, and fixed sums paid to the employee for telework no longer have an exemption of their own. Costs the employer bears for telework remain deductible (art. 25 para. 2¹); for the regime itself, see telework vs. work from home. From the same date the basket gained paying for nursery or kindergarten (up to 1,500 lei/month/child) and the interest-rate difference on loans and deposits.
• 1 January 2024 (Law 296/2023). The nominal value of meal and holiday vouchers enters the CASS base.
• 1 March 2026 (Emergency Ordinance 8/2026). Employer contributions to occupational pensions entered the basket, with a limit of 400 euro per year, and the text on voluntary pensions was reworded — the current version also mentions authorised entities in a state that has adhered to the OECD liberalisation codes. It applies to income from March 2026.

How the company deducts these expenses

• Meal and holiday vouchers have their own category of limited deductibility (art. 25 para. 3 letter c), within the legal limits, separate from the 5% cap below.
• Social expenses — social aid (birth, funeral, serious illness and the like), gifts and gift vouchers, cultural and childcare vouchers, tourism and treatment services, paying for nursery or kindergarten (up to 1,500 lei/month/child), plus other social expenses provided for in the collective agreement or internal regulations — are deductible up to 5% of the company’s salary expenses (art. 25 para. 3 letter b).
• Sports subscriptions, insurance and medical services, pensions are not on the 5% list. They are salary income as defined in art. 76, and art. 25 para. (2) leaves salary and assimilated expenses deductible, with the exceptions in paras. (3) and (4). Your accountant confirms the classification for your case.
• For a micro-enterprise, where tax is calculated on turnover, deductibility doesn’t change the tax; the advantage remains in contributions.

What the company pays and what the employee gets

For every 1,000 lei the company spends, with 2026 rates:

How you grant the amount	Cost to the company	Tax and contributions, in total	Reaches the employee
Gross pay rise (gross ≈ 978 lei, plus 2.25% CAM paid by the company)	1,000 lei	≈ 428 lei (CAS 244.5, CASS 97.8, income tax 63.6, CAM 22)	≈ 572 lei
Meal or holiday vouchers (nominal value)	1,000 lei	190 lei (CASS 100, income tax 90)	810 lei
Childcare or cultural vouchers (nominal value)	1,000 lei	100 lei (income tax)	900 lei
Benefits from the 33% basket, within limits	1,000 lei	0 lei	1,000 lei in value of use

Assumptions: rates of CAS 25%, CASS 10%, income tax 10% and CAM 2.25%, for an employee with no personal deduction (on low salaries, the personal deduction reduces the tax and changes the figures). Voucher issuer fees are not included. And “reaches the employee” for a medical subscription means the value of the service used, not money in the account — an unused benefit is worth nothing. The rates explained step by step: payroll contributions in 2026 and gross vs. net.

How to introduce a benefit without surprises

1. Choose by what your team will use, not by what’s fashionable. The cheapest benefit is the one that actually gets used.
2. Write it down. For food, accommodation, tourism services, transport and gifts, the Fiscal Code refers to what is provided for in the employment contract or the internal regulations. Put the benefit in an addendum or in the internal regulations.
3. Keep the documents: the contract with the provider, invoices or policies, the declaration for nursery. Amounts are attributed to months on the basis of these.
4. Keep two counters for each employee: the monthly 33% cap and the annual euro limits. Above them, the benefit becomes salary in kind.
5. Show it correctly on the payslip, on separate lines, so the employee sees what they received and with what withholding.
6. Re-check at the start of each year and after every fiscal ordinance — see also the 2026 fiscal measures.

What Workly does here

Workly is not a benefits management platform. What the payroll module does: it prepares the payroll as a draft, on the current year’s tax rules, which the accountant validates; it takes the worked days from time tracking and the approved leave days, so the days actually worked — the basis for meal vouchers — come out directly, and it locks the month once it’s final and exports the data to accounting in SAGA format (CSV). Checking each benefit’s limits and fitting them under the 33% cap remains something to verify with your accountant. See also how time tracking connects to payroll.

Frequently asked questions

Is the 33% cap calculated on gross or net salary?

On the base salary for the position held, that is the amount in the contract, which is gross. Bonuses, premiums and other add-ons are not added to the base.

Do meal vouchers count toward the 33% cap?

No. They have their own regime (10% income tax and 10% CASS). The basket only includes food provided in kind by the employer, and that doesn’t apply to employees who receive meal vouchers. Likewise, the tourism services in the basket don’t apply to those who receive holiday vouchers.

How much can I give per year for a gym subscription?

Up to the lei equivalent of 100 euro per person, with a provider that has CAEN code 9311, 9312 or 9313. The amount also counts toward the monthly 33% cap.

How much of a private health insurance is tax-free?

Voluntary health insurance premiums and medical subscriptions, combined, are tax-free up to the lei equivalent of 400 euro per year, per person, within the monthly 33% cap.

What happens to the amount above the limit?

It becomes salary in kind: it is taxed and enters the CAS, CASS and CAM bases, and the employer reports it like any salary income. The order in which benefits are counted against the cap is set by the employer.

Can I combine several benefits?

Yes, as long as each stays within its own limit and together they don’t exceed the monthly cap of 33% of base salary. The exceptions are those above: food in kind doesn’t combine with meal vouchers, and the basket’s tourism doesn’t combine with holiday vouchers.

Do gifts count toward the 33% cap?

No. Gifts have their own limit, 300 lei per person on each occasion provided by law. The details are in the dedicated article.

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Informational article, accurate at the date of publication. It is not tax or legal advice. Caps, rates and euro limits may change through later legislation — always check the Fiscal Code in force (art. 25, 76, 139, 142, 157) or consult an accounting specialist before introducing a benefit.