The Single Declaration reinvents itself in 2026: the first pre-filled version, rules, risks and individual responsibility

The year 2026 marks a significant stage in the taxpayers' relationship with the tax administration, as the Single Declaration (ie, Form 212) is going through an extensive modernization process this year, aimed at simplifying the declaration obligations and reducing the technical or bureaucratic barriers that have accompanied this approach in recent years.

For the first time, the Single Declaration no longer has as its starting point a PDF form that must be filled in from scratch by the taxpayer. The tax authorities introduce the pre-filled version, in which the information already existing in the ANAF databases is automatically integrated: salary income reported by employers, dividends distributed by Romanian companies, bank interest, registered rental contracts and other information provided by declarations submitted by third parties. This change is aimed at providing an easier and clearer starting point, as well as reducing the time required to complete the document.

The new pre-filling procedure remains a partial one. There are income categories that cannot be included automatically, because ANAF does not have access to all relevant sources of information. Income obtained through foreign brokers, earnings from cryptocurrencies traded on platforms outside of Romania, income from rents for properties located in other states or income from self-employment are just a few such examples. For all these situations, the taxpayer remains fully responsible for checking the pre-filled information and filling in the missing data in accordance with the personal tax situation.

Basically, the authorities can only provide the data they have, but the final accuracy of the declaration and the tax obligations arising from the Single Declaration remain the responsibility of the taxpayer. In this sense, we emphasize the need for the pre-filled information made available by ANAF to be carefully checked by the taxpayer before submitting the declaration and completed accordingly, not just accepted as correct and final, the pre-filled declaration not constituting a debt.

3% early deposit bonus

For the revenues achieved in 2025, the authorities are introducing a voluntary compliance incentive mechanism, designed to encourage the early submission of Single Declarations and to reduce the pressure on the ANAF platforms in May, when, traditionally, the systems have been frequently overloaded.

It is about a 3% bonus applied to the income tax, for those who submit the Single Declaration and fully pay the tax obligations related to the income made in 2025 (income tax, social insurance contribution and social health insurance contribution, as the case may be) until April 15, 2026, inclusive. The bonus does not apply to social contributions, which will be paid in full, nor to income tax withheld at source.

The deadline to take advantage of the bonus is very short, considering that the pre-filled data starts to be made available only these days, which means that people who want to take advantage of the bonus have a window of only two weeks. For this reason, it may be more efficient for some taxpayers not to wait for pre-completion from ANAF and to submit the declaration based on their own records.

At the same time, natural persons for whom the pre-filling application does not display any data are not exempted from the obligation to submit the Single Declaration. In the absence of pre-completion, the taxpayer must submit the declaration, if he has this obligation according to the provisions of the Fiscal Code.

The differential impact on taxpayers

In practice, we expect this process to produce different effects depending on the profile of the taxpayer. For those with “standard” extra-salary income, fully reported in Romania, pre-filling can greatly simplify the procedure. For those with multiple incomes or coming from international sources, however, the obligation to check and complete remains a substantial one.

Our recommendation is that, regardless of whether ANAF makes certain pre-filled information available or not, each taxpayer should carefully keep their supporting documents in their personal archive. Thus, bank statements, transaction reports, dividend receipt documents, rental agreements and all other supporting documents remain essential in this process. They not only facilitate the correct completion of the Single Declaration, but can 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 form from 2026, represents a necessary step towards the modernization of the tax administration, towards a more transparent system, easier to use and closer to the taxpayer. However, it remains to be seen how it will work in practice, because we are talking about a system still in evolution, with limitations inherent in the first year of implementation, but, for the moment, the desired direction is clear: simplification, digitalization, predictability and efficiency of the declarative process.

This modernization brings benefits, but does not remove individual responsibility. Each taxpayer must know his tax obligations, carefully check the information provided by ANAF and adjust or complete it where necessary.

Looking to the future, as, we hope, ANAF will integrate more and more data sources and perfect this automatic information retrieval mechanism, the taxpayer could end up having to make only minimal adjustments, and the declaration process could become a truly simplified one.

Article signed by Corina Mîndoiu, Partner, Income Tax and Social Contributions, EY Romania and Mădălina Damian, Manager, Income Tax and Social Contributions, EY Romania

Article supported by EY Romania