May 2018, tax and business news
Business news
Romania was the 16th economy of the EU in 2017
According to Eurostat, Romania was the 16th economy of the EU, having a Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of 187.8 bil EUR in 2017.
As a consequence, Romania has a weight of 1.2% in the EU’s GDP, almost the same with the Greece’s one (177.7 bil EUR). Same time, it is slightly less than the one of the Czech Republic (192 bil EUR).
First place was held by Germany, with a GDP of almost 3,300 bil EUR (21.3% of the EU’s GDP). Second place was held by UK (15.2%) followed by France (14.9%), Italy (11.2%), Spain (7.6%) and Netherland (4.8%).
Amazon launched its development center from Bucharest
Amazon just launched its development center from Bucharest where 50 people already works (650 other employees will join them soon).
The Bucharest center will develop solutions for Amazon’s cloud division and for the vocal assistant Alexa.
Amazon is present in Romania since 2005 in city of Iasi, employing 1,000 people and investing around 100 mil EUR since then.
Belgian investments in land for constructions
Within the last year, two of the richest Belgian families (De Pauw and Van Geet) bought over 55 hectares of land near Bucharest, whose cumulated value exceeds 20 mil EUR.
Constructions field is one of the most dynamic of the Romanian economy – most of apartments are sold even from the project phase.
Also, the dynamic of the construction of office buildings follows the same scheme, especially in the north of Bucharest and cities like Cluj Napoca, Brasov and Iasi.
Tax news
The required number of employees from tax point of view
As this month there are not so much news in the tax field, I take the advantage to recap the number of employees that a company is required to have in order to fulfill some legal requirements:
In order to remain VAT payer, a company must have at least one employee working part time at least 4 hours/day
In order to be taxed with 1% at turnover (instead of 3%), a microenterprise must have at least one full time employee
In order to be able to choose to become profit tax payer, a company must have at least two full time employees
Macroeconomic indicators
RON / EUR ex-rate evolution
30.12.2012: 4.4287
31.01.2013: 4.4847
31.12.2014: 4.4821
31.12.2015: 4.5245
31.12.2016: 4.4511
31.12.2017: 4.6597
31.01.2018: 4.6474
28.02.2018: 4.6564
31.03.2018: 4.6569
30.04.2018: 4.6618
Inflation rate evolution
2012: 3.33 %
2013: 3.98 %
2014: 1.07 %
2015: – 0.90%
2016: – 0.54%
2017: 3.32%
Jan. 2018 / Jan. 2017: 4.32%
Feb. 2018 / Feb. 2018: 4.72%
Mar. 2018 / Mar. 2017: 4.95%
Apr. 2018 / Apr. 2017: 5.22%
Key indicators
– VAT: 19%
– Profit tax: 16%
– Microenterprise tax: 3% / 1%
– Dividend tax: 5%
– Total salary taxes: cca 50% in addition to the negotiated net salary
– Minimum gross salary: 1,900 RON (e.g. cca 408 EUR)
– Local tax on buildings:
– residential: 0.08% – 0.2%
– business: 2% – 1.3%
– Tax deductible loan interest: 200,000 EUR+10% of the gross profit