The year 2026 marks a significant milestone in taxpayers' relationship with the tax administration, as the Single Declaration (i.e., Form 212) undergoes a comprehensive modernization process this year, aiming to simplify filing obligations and reduce the technical or bureaucratic barriers that have accompanied this endeavor in recent years, according to Corina Mîndoiu, Partner, Income Tax and Social Contributions, and Mădălina Damian, Manager, Income Tax and Social Contributions, EY Romania.
For the first time, the Single Declaration no longer starts with a PDF form that must be completed from scratch by the taxpayer. Tax authorities are introducing a pre-filled version that automatically integrates information already existing in ANAF's databases: salary income reported by employers, dividends distributed by Romanian companies, bank interest, registered rental agreements, and other information provided through third-party declarations. This change aims to provide a simpler and clearer starting point, as well as reduce the time required to complete the document.
The new pre-filled procedure remains partial. There are categories of income that cannot be automatically included because ANAF does not have access to all relevant sources of information. Income obtained through foreign brokers, cryptocurrency earnings traded on platforms outside Romania, rental income for properties located in other countries, or income from independent activities are just a few such examples. For all these situations, the taxpayer remains fully responsible for verifying the pre-filled information and completing the missing data in accordance with their personal tax situation.
In practice, authorities can only provide the data they hold, but the final accuracy of the declaration and the tax obligations arising from the Single Declaration remain the responsibility of the taxpayer. In this regard, we emphasize the need for the pre-filled information provided by ANAF to be carefully verified by the taxpayer before submitting the declaration and completed accordingly, not just accepted as correct and final, as the pre-filled declaration does not constitute a title of debt.
% early filing bonus
For income earned in 2025, authorities are introducing a voluntary compliance incentive mechanism designed to encourage the early submission of Single Declarations and reduce the pressure on ANAF platforms in May, a period when systems have traditionally been frequently overloaded.
This is about a% bonus applied to income tax for those who file the Unique Declaration and pay in full the tax obligations related to income earned in 2025 (income tax, social security contributions, and health insurance contributions, as applicable) by April 15, 2026, inclusive. The bonus does not apply to social security contributions, which must be paid in full, nor to income tax withheld at source.
The deadline to benefit from the bonus is very short, considering that the pre-filled data is only becoming available these days, which means that people who wish to take advantage of the bonus have only a two-week window left. For this reason, it may be more efficient for some taxpayers not to wait for the pre-filling by ANAF and to submit the declaration based on their own records.
At the same time, individuals for whom the pre-filled application does not display any data are not exempt from the obligation to submit the Single Declaration. In the absence of pre-filling, the taxpayer must submit the declaration if they have this obligation according to the provisions of the Fiscal Code.
The differentiated impact on taxpayers
In practice, we expect this process to produce different effects depending on the taxpayer's profile. For those with „standard” non-employment income, fully reported in Romania, pre-filling can greatly simplify the procedure. However, for those with multiple incomes or income from international sources, the obligation to verify and complete remains substantial.
Our recommendation is that, regardless of whether the ANAF (National Agency for Fiscal Administration) provides certain pre-filled information or not, each taxpayer should carefully keep their supporting documents in their personal archive. Thus, bank statements, transaction reports, documents concerning received dividends, rental contracts, and all other supporting documents remain essential in this process. These not only facilitate the correct completion of the Unique Declaration but can also be decisive in the event of subsequent checks by the tax authorities.
In practice, keeping these documents is not just a formality, but a protective measure that can help the taxpayer in any administrative or fiscal situation.
The Single Declaration, in its 2026 form, represents a necessary step towards modernizing tax administration, towards a more transparent, user-friendly, and taxpayer-centric system. However, it remains to be seen how it will work in practice, as we are talking about a system still under development, with limitations inherent to the first year of implementation. Nevertheless, for now, the desired direction is clear: simplification, digitalization, predictability, and efficiency of the declaration process.
This modernization brings benefits, but it does not remove individual responsibility. Each taxpayer must know their tax obligations, carefully verify the information provided by ANAF, and adjust or complete it where necessary.
Looking ahead, as ANAF hopefully integrates more data sources and refines this automatic information retrieval mechanism, taxpayers may only need to make minimal adjustments, and the declaration process could become truly simplified.