As of July 1, it is reintroduced the requirement that the company benefiting from the tax exemption for programmers needs to register revenues exceeding 10,000 euros per each IT worker.
The measure has been reintroduced by the Joint Order of the Ministries of Communications, Education, Labour and Finance 409/4.020/737/703 regarding the activity classification of the software creation, which comes into force on July 1.
The article that reintroduces the 10,000-euro threshold for each programmer:
- e) the annual income referred to in paragraph d) has an equivalent value in lei of at least 10,000 euros (calculated at the monthly average exchange rate communicated by the National Bank of Romania relating to each month when the income has been registered) for each employee who benefits from the income tax exemption.
This condition existed in the former versions of this tax facility but has been eliminated in January (as of February 1) also by the current Sorin Grindeanu government that has now changed its decision.
In the five months, the exemption has been granted regardless of how big the revenues obtained by the employer from software products.
How Minister Augustin Jianu explains threshold elimination
„We are talking about one of the facilities that the IT market in Romania has relied on and grew beyond the extremely well-trained human capital. Under the government program, we shall need to extend this order to programmers having a secondary education qualification. The order would be issued this year, in the fourth quarter, with effect as of 1 January 2018,” said Augustin Jianu.
„We have reintroduced a new financial threshold for companies that are not in the start-up category to avoid the opportunism or exclude companies that claim to produce software products even though they do not, and have maintained the facility for companies that are not more than one fiscal year old,” explained Augustin Jianu, Minister of Communications and Information Society, quoted by Agerpres.
Programmers may be graduates of any faculty, but hold certain positions and meet the following requirements:
- List of occupations (database administrator, analyst, IT system engineer, software system engineer, IT project manager, programmer, computer system designer, IT system programmer.
- The job is part of an IT specialized department, highlighted in the organizational chart, such as division, department, office, unit, or similar;
- Hold a diploma awarded after graduating a form of long-term higher education or a diploma awarded after graduating the first cycle of the undergraduate studies,
- The employer obtained in the previous fiscal year and specifically recorded in the analytical balances revenues from the software creation activity.
As of January 1, 2018, the income tax exemption will be extended to programmers having a secondary education qualification. The order is to be issued in the fourth quarter of this year.
