Tax-free IT wages coming "soon"

The wage taxes for software developers will be cancelled “soon”, PM Adrian Nastase says.

“This decision will practically make wages of software developers double,” Nastase said.

According to Nastase, the main reason why the Government has made this decision in the first place is to stop the migration of the Romanian software specialists to other countries, where they are better paid.

The Prime Minister also specified that the decision was to be soon published in the Official Gazette and was one of the first steps in sectorial policies intended to boost certain economic fields.

“We have two goals. The first is preserving the purchasing power and the second is developing profitable sectors, which include IT, agriculture and tourism,” Nastase added.

“This is too important an issue to ruin it by press statements before it is final. All I can say is that once we have the entire set of decisions enacted, we will surely outstrip Ireland due to the effects those decisions are to produce. Furthermore, I think the IT industry will finally become Romanian economy’s “tractor”,” Varujan Pambuccian, chairman of the Parliamentary Committee for IT and Communications, told Ziarul Financiar.

Jean Philippe Courtois, senior vice-president and EMEA president of Microsoft Corp, present in Romania for talks over Governmental IT projects on Wednesday, confirmed that the enforcement of fiscal incentives for the IT sector were imminent. “Minister Dan Nica promised such measures will be introduced very soon,” Courtois told Ziarul Financiar.

Sources in the IT&C Ministry in their turn verified the information about the governmental initiatives to proceed to wage tax cancellations for employees in the IT sector.