Meal vouchers 2026: the maximum value of 45 lei, the one-voucher-per-day-worked rule, who is eligible and how the 10% income tax plus 10% CASS applies.
Translated from Romanian. This article covers Romanian labour and tax law; the Romanian version is canonical and is updated first.
The meal voucher (tichetul de masă) remains one of the most widely used non-salary benefits in Romania — useful because it does not enter the calculation base for all social contributions, so more of it reaches the employee than an equivalent rise in gross pay. In 2026 there are a few concrete rules that an owner or HR manager of an SME needs to know: the 45 lei cap, the rule that vouchers follow the days actually worked, and the way they are taxed. We take them one at a time.
The maximum nominal value of a meal voucher is 45 lei per day worked, a cap applicable to entitlements from November 2025 onwards and in force in the first part of 2026.
It is worth stressing: 45 lei is a legal cap, not a mandatory amount. The employer decides whether to grant vouchers and at what value — it can set any amount up to this maximum (for example 30, 40 or 45 lei), depending on its budget and internal benefits policy. The law obliges no company to grant meal vouchers, nor to use the maximum value.
The mechanism behind it: Legea 165/2018 sets a reference value that is indexed twice a year, by joint order of the minister of finance and the minister of labour, in line with the evolution of food prices. That is how the cap reached 45 lei, up from a previous level of roughly 40.18 lei. Because it is re-indexed periodically, the value may change again during the year — always check the updated cap before setting it in payroll.
The number of vouchers granted in a month may not exceed the number of days actually worked by the employee in that month. One voucher corresponds to one working day — no vouchers are granted for days on which the employee did not perform work.
Concretely, no vouchers are granted for:
For that reason, for an employee on a normal schedule the monthly number of vouchers varies from month to month — depending on how many working days the month has and how many days the employee was actually away. Done by hand from the time records, this calculation is one of the frequent sources of payroll errors.
From a tax point of view, meal vouchers bear two withholdings in 2026:
Neither CAS (the pension contribution, 25%) nor the work insurance contribution owed by the employer applies. In practice, vouchers are “cheaper” in tax terms than equivalent gross salary precisely because they avoid CAS.
The combined effect is a total withholding of roughly 20% of the nominal value of the vouchers, with the rest reaching the employee’s voucher card.
Suppose an employee with 21 days actually worked in a month, receiving vouchers at the maximum value of 45 lei/day:
The withholdings on vouchers add to those on the salary itself and appear on the payslip as separate lines. For an employee whose personal deduction is already used up by the base salary, the practical rule is simple: roughly 80% of the nominal value of the vouchers effectively stays with the employee.
Any employee with an individual employment contract may receive vouchers, at the employer where they hold their main job. The form of work organisation makes no difference:
Vouchers may be issued on paper or in electronic form (card). In practice the card format has become the standard: it is easier to distribute, to block if lost and to track. The tax treatment is identical for both formats — the 10% income tax and the 10% CASS apply in the same way, whatever the medium.
The sensitive part with vouchers is not the tax rate itself, but the correct link between time records and payroll: how many days each employee actually worked, which days were leave or sick leave and, consequently, how many vouchers they are due. Done manually, this is where most mistakes appear.
Workly’s time-tracking and payroll module links days actually worked to the number of vouchers automatically, applies the income tax and CASS withholdings in the salary calculation, and reflects everything consistently in the SAGA-format export, the basis for Declaration 112. The calculation is deterministic — the same inputs always produce the same result, with no interpretation and no manual corrections from one month to the next. And the internal assistant Modi answers questions about rules and figures from your real data, not through a language model that could “invent” a cap or a rate.
Informational article, accurate at the date of publication. It is not tax or legal advice, and caps and rates may change through indexation or new legislation. Always check the value and the rules in force at source (the Fiscal Code, Legea 165/2018, the joint MF/MMSS order) or consult a specialist.
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