The Minister of Finance, after the CCR changed the deadline for the pronouncement on the local taxes law: The bullet passed through our temple

“The bullet passed through our temple,” said Thursday evening the Minister of Public Finance, Alexandru Nazare, after the Constitutional Court changed the deadline for judging the appeal filed by AUR against the law that increases local taxes and fees. The official stated that the Executive took the “necessary precautionary measures” for the project to be constitutional.

Nazare testified that a decision that the CCR would have taken next year regarding the constitutionality of this law would have put the government in difficulty, because the normative act could not have been applied from January 2026.

“On December 10, it is clear that it is good, that it is during 2025 and we have enough time so that this legislative package is promulgated in 2025 so that it can be applied on January 1. The problem was that it could no longer be applied on January 1 if the discussion took place in January or February next year,” the Minister of Finance said on Thursday evening, on Digi 24.

Alexandru Nazare showed that, before discussing money, the most important thing is trust, and through the fiscal measures he adopted, Romania has “regained the level of trust” in relation to international partners, the European Commission, and the rating agencies. “It's been an extremely difficult process over the last four months where, step by step, we've managed to regain that trust, and it would have been a shame to lose it,” he said.

“A good term”

“Of course, the construction of the 2026 budget would have been much more complicated, because the equation of these revenues depended significantly on the 2026 budget, and there would have been implications regarding the PNRR, in some places possible frozen amounts. So, the bullet passed through our temple. We were in discussions with the World Bank and we left immediately when we saw the news and of course we started to discuss, we immediately called the Commission so that there is a permanent dialogue and there is no syncope, to know exactly what we are doing and, of course, in dialogue with the prime minister, permanently, a little later, during the afternoon, I received the news that it has been moved from January 21 to December 10”, added the government official, according to News.ro.

“I think that December 10 is a good deadline, especially since this legislative package had been at the Court for more than 70 days, the Court had made observations on the package, we took care to completely remove the paragraphs that the Court was referring to, so that there would be no doubt when the law is approved again. So, basically, we had taken the necessary precautions”, emphasized the Minister of Finance.

Initially, the Constitutional Court set for January 21, 2026 the term when it will judge a new challenge of the AUR regarding the unconstitutionality of the law that establishes measures to recover and make public resources more efficient and amends and completes normative acts.

This law aims to increase taxes and duties on housing, land, cars and dividends, as well as parcel tariffs, increases that the government hopes to implement from the beginning of next year.

The law had been contested once before, and the judges declared unconstitutional only the provision regarding the polygraph test.

On Tuesday, the plenary session of the Parliament adopted the law in the corrected form, and on November 20 it was sent to the president for promulgation.

In the meantime, it was contested again at the CCR, which set a deadline for next year. The government announced that it requested the CCR to change the term.

Thursday evening, the Constitutional Court announced that it changed the deadline to December 10, 2025.

What measures will come into force from January 1

From next year, the property taxes for individuals, for cars, are to be increased.

The project proposes the calculation of taxes through a transitional mechanism, until January 2027, when it will switch to taxation at the market value, there being not enough time for implementation until the beginning of next year.

Even so, the housing tax will increase significantly, by almost 80%, according to estimates made by Profit.ro. For a three-room apartment in Bucharest for which the tax this year was 198 lei, next year the owner will owe 355 lei, according to the calculations of the business site.

The draft law proposes updating the taxable values ​​from the Fiscal Code by 2.68 times, regardless of the type of building (concrete frames, wood, etc.). The values ​​provided now are those of 2015, but have been updated with inflation in the meantime.

Also from January 1, 2026, it is foreseen that all merchants will be obliged to accept payment with debit, credit or prepaid cards, through a POS terminal and/or other modern acceptance solutions, including applications that facilitate the acceptance of electronic payments, regardless of the amount of cash receipts made during a year.

The threshold of 50,000 lei in cash receipts made during a year from which the obligation to accept debit, credit or prepaid cards as a means of payment for legal entities that carry out retail and wholesale trade activities, as well as those that carry out service activities, will be eliminated, giving the possibility to card holders, in the current context, dominated by digitalization, to use this means of payment at a greater number of economic operators.

The project also proposes a new mechanism for taxing means of transport, so that there is a differentiation between more polluting and less polluting vehicles, on the “polluter pays” principle.

For each category of means of transport with mechanical traction, a tax is differentiated according to two criteria: cylinder capacity (in lei/200 cm3) and the pollution norm. There are 8 pollution standards from the most polluting, non-euro, to the most non-polluting: E0/Non-euro, E1, E2, E3, E4, E5, E6, Hybrids with emissions level higher than 50g CO2/km.

Thus, for a car with a 1.6-2.0 liter engine with an E0-E3 pollution standard, the tax would be between 237.6 lei and 297 lei. For a car with the same engine, but with Euro 4 pollution standard, the tax would be between 228 lei and 285 lei. For a car with the same 1.6-2.0 liter engine, with a Euro 5 pollution standard, the tax would be 213 lei and 267 lei.