The adoption of Government Ordinance no. 6/2026 represents a necessary legislative intervention to correct certain unintended effects generated by Law no. 245/2025, which, starting 1 January 2026, introduced the obligation to fiscally register all secondary establishments employing at least one employee. Applying this rule without territorial distinctions would have led to significant over-bureaucratization, estimated at approximately 400,000 secondary establishments registered unnecessarily.
The new regulation brings important clarifications to the Fiscal Procedure Code, establishing that when a taxpayer operates multiple secondary establishments within the same administrative-territorial unit (ATU), they are required to designate a single secondary establishment. The tax registration of the designated establishment will cover all active points of work in that locality. The deadline for submitting the registration request is 30 days from the establishment of the first secondary establishment.
A major simplification is the introduction of the exception for overlap with the fiscal domicile. Accordingly, when secondary establishments are located in the same locality as the taxpayer’s registered office, no separate tax registration is required. Payroll tax is declared and paid directly under the main tax identification number, eliminating the need to assign secondary tax codes.
For taxpayers with secondary establishments set up before 1 January 2026, OG no. 6/2026 introduces a transitional compliance regime aimed at reducing administrative pressure and sanction risks:
· Suspension of contraventional penalties until 30 June 2026 for failure to comply with the registration obligations initially imposed by Law no. 245/2025;
· Obligation to notify the tax authority regarding the designated secondary establishment, together with a list of all points of work in the same locality;
· Ex officio cancellation of tax identification codes assigned to non-designated secondary establishments following the notification process.
Overall, these amendments succeed in balancing the legislator’s legitimate objective—redistributing income tax to local budgets based on where the activity is actually carried out—with the principle of administrative efficiency. Centralizing tax obligations under a single tax code, where the tax ultimately reaches the same local authority, eliminates unnecessary fragmentation and significantly reduces the compliance burden. Procedural details are to be established by an order of the President of ANAF, to be issued within 30 days.