Guide to Romanian payroll contributions in 2026: CAS 25%, CASS 10% and 10% income tax withheld from the employee, CAM 2.25% borne by the employer, and the link to monthly reporting.
Translated from Romanian. This article covers Romanian labour and tax law; the Romanian version is canonical and is updated first.
When an employee looks at their payslip, the gap between the gross salary in the contract and the amount that actually lands in their account often looks like a black box. In reality there are three withholdings from the employee’s gross and one contribution borne separately by the employer. Here is the full map for 2026.
All three are borne by the employee: withheld at source by the employer and paid to the state on their behalf. The employee never sees them as separate payments — they are already deducted on the payslip.
On top of the gross salary, the employer separately owes the work insurance contribution (CAM), at 2.25%. This is not deducted from the employee’s net — it is an additional cost borne entirely by the company. CAM replaced the former separate contributions for unemployment, sick leave, occupational accidents and salary claims, merging them into a single rate.
In practice, the real cost of an employee is gross + 2.25%, not just the gross. Many business owners forget this when budgeting headcount.
CAS and CASS apply to gross income. Income tax, however, is computed on the taxable base, obtained by subtracting from the gross both contributions and the personal deduction.
The personal deduction is a tax-free amount that reduces the taxable base. It is larger for lower incomes and for employees with dependants. It is granted only at the main job and decreases progressively as the gross rises, until it is cancelled above a threshold. The larger the deduction, the lower the tax paid — so the higher the net.
A standard payslip follows exactly this logic:
Separately, in the employer cost section, CAM (2.25%) appears — it does not affect the net.
All withheld contributions and CAM are reported monthly through the Romanian payroll declaration, which shows the tax authority, for each employee, the gross earned, the contributions withheld and the tax paid. Errors in rates or bases propagate directly into that declaration and can trigger corrections and penalties.
Beyond the standard framework there are cases that change the withholdings: the tax-free amount at minimum-wage level, special regimes for certain benefits (for example maternity leave, where only CAS is withheld), or categories with distinct treatment. Each case must be checked against the Fiscal Code in force at the time of payment, because thresholds and facilities change frequently.
Workly’s payroll module automatically applies every rate — CAS 25%, CASS 10%, income tax 10% and CAM 2.25% — to the correct base for each employee, with the gross pro-rated from the time records and the income tax exemption applied where relevant. The calculation is deterministic: the same inputs always produce the same result, with no manual approximations. The personal deduction is applied automatically from the art. 77 grid — the base amount, the supplement for employees under 26 and the one for children in education — broken down on the payslip, and granted only at the main job.
From there, the SAGA-format export is generated with figures already aligned with the payslips, and your accountant files the monthly declaration from the accounting software on the same basis. The net-salary calculator on this site models these rates, so you can quickly see how a gross breaks down into net and total employer cost.
Informational article, accurate at the date of publication. Not tax or legal advice. Rates, thresholds and facilities may change through subsequent legislation — always verify the level in force at source (ANAF, the Fiscal Code) or consult a specialist.
Payslip guide: the employer's duty to inform, what elements it contains, how to read it line by line, electronic delivery and confidentiality.
Personal deduction guide: the percentage system in art. 77 of the Fiscal Code, the 20–45% grid by dependants, the cancellation threshold and the main-job declaration.
Guide to the payroll register: its role as a supporting document, mandatory content, signing and confidentiality, the archiving term and the link to the payslip.
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