The personal deduction
The personal deduction (art. 77 of the Tax Code) lowers taxable salary income at the main job: a base deduction that tapers with gross pay and the number of dependants, plus supplementary amounts (young workers under 26 and children enrolled in school).
The personal deduction (deducerea personală, art. 77 of the Tax Code) is the part of your salary that income tax never touches. It applies only at your main job (the funcția de bază) and it is subtracted from the taxable income before the flat rate is worked out, so it lifts the take-home net the most exactly where it is felt the most — at low and mid salaries. It has two parts: a base deduction that shrinks as your gross salary rises, and a supplementary deductionfor young workers and for children in school.
The base deduction, and how it tapers
The base deduction is expressed as a percentage of the gross national minimum wage (the salariul minim), not of your own pay. Where your gross is at or below the minimum wage, that percentage starts at 20 % with no dependants and climbs with the number of people in your care — reaching 45 % with four or more dependants. From there it slides down: for every 50 lei of gross above the minimum wage, the percentage drops by 0,5 percentage points. Once your gross is more than 2.000 lei above the minimum wage, the base deduction reaches zero and stops.
A dependant (persoană în întreținere) is typically a spouse, a child or a close relative whose own monthly income stays under a small share of the minimum wage; minor children under 18 always count. The more dependants you declare, the higher the starting percentage — which is why the same gross salary yields a different net for a single worker and for a parent of three.
| Dependants | Start % of minimum wage |
|---|---|
| None | 20 % |
| One | 25 % |
| Two | 30 % |
| Three | 35 % |
| Four or more | 45 % |
The two supplements
On top of the base deduction, two supplementary amounts can apply, and they behave very differently:
- Young workers under 26. If you are 26 or younger, a further 15 % of the minimum wage is added — but only while your gross stays within the same 2.000 lei-above-the-minimum ceiling as the base deduction. Above that ceiling this supplement disappears together with the base deduction.
- Children in school. For each child under 18 enrolled in an educational unit, 100 lei a month is added, granted to one parent. This one is different in kind: it applies at any income level — it survives even when the gross is high enough that the base deduction and the young-worker supplement are both already zero.
The ceiling on the whole deduction
The base deduction and the supplements are added together, and the total is then capped at the taxable income actually earned that month — the deduction can lower the tax base to zero, but it can never turn it negative or create a refund. In practice this cap only bites at the very bottom of the pay scale, where the combined deduction would otherwise exceed the income left after contributions.
A note on rounding. Romania’s tax code sets out the deduction as an exact percentage of the minimum wage, but it is not fully explicit about how the resulting figure is rounded to the whole leu on the payslip. This calculator applies a single, consistent rounding rule, and the point is flagged for review — so a small discrepancy of a leu or two against a specific employer’s payroll software is expected and does not mean either figure is wrong.
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