How the pension is calculated in the new system (Legea 360/2023): the reference point value, contribution and stability points, the eligibility conditions and the tax treatment.
Translated from Romanian. This article covers Romanian labour and tax law; the Romanian version is canonical and is updated first.
The pension reform brought in by Legea nr. 360/2023 (Law 360/2023) changed the way the old-age pension is calculated. In place of the old scoring system, it now works with a total number of points multiplied by a reference value. For an employer, the formula matters because the contribution data you report monthly feeds exactly into those points. Here is the logic, step by step.
Simplified, the pension is calculated as:
Pension = the reference point value (VPR — valoarea punctului de referință) × the total number of points.
VPR is a value set and indexed periodically by the state. A person’s total number of points results from adding up three categories: contribution points, stability points and assimilated points.
These reflect how much you actually contributed. For each year worked, the income (the salary) is set against the average gross wage in the economy for that year, producing an annual score. Someone who earned exactly the average accumulated roughly 1 point per year; someone who earned more or less, proportionately. This is where the CAS contribution of 25% (the pension contribution) withheld throughout a career comes in directly — the higher and the more consistent the contribution base was, the more contribution points there are.
The novelty of Legea 360/2023 is that long service is rewarded through stability points, granted for the contribution years above certain thresholds:
In practice, someone who contributes for a long time receives an increasing bonus of points, as an incentive to stay in work for longer.
Certain periods without actual contribution are nonetheless taken into account: higher education studies (under certain conditions), child-raising leave, military service and others. To these is added the special treatment for difficult or special working conditions, where the contribution period can be counted more favourably.
For the old-age pension under the general regime, the following are required cumulatively:
There are also other types of pension — early, invalidity, survivor’s — each with its own rules on contribution history and age.
The pension is not entirely tax-free. Above a monthly threshold (the part exceeding 3,000 lei), tax and, respectively, CASS of 10% (the health contribution) apply to the part exceeding the threshold, under the tax regime in force. Below the threshold, the pension is unaffected. These thresholds have temporary components and must be checked at the date of payment.
Although the pension is set by the pension house, the “raw material” of the calculation comes from employment activity: the gross salary declared monthly, the CAS withheld, the contribution period recorded, the bonuses for difficult working conditions. Errors in the past — unrecorded income, missing certificates — turn into points lost at retirement, and the employee often comes back to the former employer for certificates to reconstruct the record.
The data that feeds contribution history and points — gross pay, CAS, CASS, bonuses for difficult working conditions — comes from time tracking and payroll. Workly consolidates it deterministically and reports it coherently through the Declaration 112 (D112) and the SAGA-format export, so that each employee’s contribution history is complete and verifiable. When an employee needs certificates of income or of length of service for a pension file, they are generated from consolidated data rather than reconstructed by hand from paper archives.
Informational article, accurate at the date of publication. Not legal or financial advice. The pension calculation formula, the reference point value and the tax thresholds change through legislation and indexation — always check the framework in force at the official source (the National House of Public Pensions, the Official Gazette) or consult a specialist before taking a decision.
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