2026 diurnă guide: the domestic tax-free cap (2.5x and 33% of base salary), foreign allowances under HG 518/1995, delegation conditions and worked examples.
Translated from Romanian. This article covers Romanian labour and tax law; the Romanian version is canonical and is updated first.
When you send an employee on a delegation, you have two distinct costs: the actual expenses (transport, accommodation) and the diurnă — a daily allowance covering meals, local transport at the destination and the incidental expenses the employee bears while away. The diurnă does not replace an expense claim: transport and accommodation costs are reimbursed separately, against supporting documents. The diurnă is a flat amount for each day of travel.
The sensitive part in 2026 is the tax treatment. The diurnă can be tax-free up to a cap, but above it becomes income assimilated to salary — with tax and contributions. And in 2026 there is a further complication: the minimum wage changes mid-year, which splits the year into two cap regimes.
The diurnă is granted for delegation — the situation in which the employee temporarily performs work away from the usual place of work, at the employer’s direction. The basic conditions:
For domestic trips, the starting point is the level set for the public sector. Under the framework applicable to public institutions (HG 714/2018 and the subsequent updates of the amount), the base diurnă is 23 lei/day.
For private employers, the tax-free cap is calculated with a multiplier: 2.5 × the statutory level. So:
23 lei × 2.5 = 57.5 lei/day — the domestic tax-free cap per day of delegation in 2026.
Above this amount, the excess becomes income assimilated to salary: it is taxed and enters the contributions base.
But 2.5x is not the only filter. The Fiscal Code (Codul Fiscal) imposes a second, cumulative cap: the total of the diurnă amounts in a month may not exceed 33% of the employee’s gross base salary (the equivalent of 3 base salaries related to the days of delegation, pro-rated to the working days in the month). In practice, the tax-free part is the lower of the two limits:
Both must be observed at the same time. For low salaries or very long delegations, the 33% filter can bite before the daily cap does.
Here is the trap specific to 2026. The guaranteed minimum gross base salary changes during the year: 4,050 lei until 30 June 2026 and 4,325 lei from 1 July 2026 (an increase approved by government decision).
The 33% filter applies to each employee’s gross base salary, not to the minimum wage directly. But for employees paid at the minimum level, the monthly 33% cap changes along with the base salary:
Concretely: for the same length of delegation, an employee paid at the minimum can have a different monthly cap in January than in September. If you manage the diurnă by hand, it is easy to apply the wrong cap in the transition month.
An employee with a gross base salary of 5,000 lei, on delegation for 10 days in March (21 working days), with a diurnă granted by the company of 70 lei/day.
For trips abroad, the base level of the diurnă is set for each country, in foreign currency, under the annex to HG 518/1995 (an act in force and updated in 2026). For example, for many euro-area states (Germany, Austria, Italy, France, Spain and others) the base diurnă is 35 euro/day; for other countries the values differ and may be expressed in dollars.
The tax logic is the same as for domestic trips: for private employers, the tax-free cap is 2.5 × the country level, cumulated with the 33% of gross base salary filter. For a country with a base of 35 euro/day:
35 euro × 2.5 = 87.5 euro/day tax-free (the lei equivalent at the applicable exchange rate), subject also to observing the 33% cap.
Always check the base value for the specific country in the annex to HG 518/1995, because it differs significantly from one destination to another.
Diurnă amounts are a classic source of errors: the wrong cap in the transition month, the 33% filter ignored, the excess not treated for tax. In Workly, the days of delegation come straight from the time records — you do not count them by hand. The payroll module applies both filters (2.5x and 33%), automatically calculates the tax-free part and treats the excess as income assimilated to salary, with tax and contributions, then carries it into the SAGA-format export, the basis for Declaration 112.
And if a colleague in HR is not sure how the two caps combine, Modi — the internal, deterministic assistant, with no external LLM and therefore no risk of inventing figures — answers with the concrete rule: the lower of 2.5x per day and 33% of the gross base salary.
Informational article, accurate at the date of publication. Not tax or legal advice. Legislation and amounts may change; always check the values at source (the Fiscal Code, the Labour Code, HG 518/1995, HG 714/2018) or with a specialist before taking decisions.
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