What happens if you don't register a rental contract in Moldova

15 August 2026 · KX Estate team

A lease between two private individuals is often agreed verbally, or on a single sheet of paper that never reaches anyone. The reasoning is easy to follow: the deal is private, the money is cash, nobody else is involved. Since 2026 that reasoning no longer holds, and not because penalties got harsher. The tax service learned to find these arrangements without anyone filing anything.

The rules everything else follows from

An individual who rents out property without conducting business activity pays 7% income tax on the monthly contract amount. The contract must be registered with the SFS within 7 days of signing, and the tax paid monthly, by the 25th of the current month.

The same rules cover short lets through Booking and Airbnb. The tax service spells this out separately, because owners often treat a few nights as something other than rent.

Two of these deadlines get missed most often: the seven days to register and the 25th to pay.

What changed on 8 May 2026

Since 8 May the SFS has been raising the tax obligation for lease contracts automatically. It runs through the e-Cerere module “Registration of real property lease contracts by individuals”, and the result appears in the taxpayer’s current account and on the EVO portal.

One detail here is worth reading twice: the automation only works for a registered contract. If the contract is in the system, the amount appears on its own and you do not have to calculate or declare it. If there is no contract, there is no automatic assessment either, but the obligation does not go away. It only means you will be found some other way.

What “some other way” looks like

Over seven months of 2026 the SFS identified 550 people renting out property without a registered contract. It ran 311 fiscal audits on them and assessed a further 445,300 lei in tax, 20,600 lei in late-payment penalties and 31,900 lei in fines.

For comparison, the whole of 2025 produced 1,901 identified individuals and 283 inspections, with 654,400 lei assessed. The audit count for seven months of 2026 already exceeds the entire previous year.

The sums look modest at first glance. The average assessment works out below a thousand lei, and using them to frighten anyone would be dishonest. The point of the figures is different: the mechanism went from occasional to routine, and the base it checks against is growing by itself. From January to July 2026 the service collected 70.1 million lei against 95.3 million for all of 2025, and registered contracts reached 23,192 against 33,696 for last year in full.

Why an unregistered contract is bad for the landlord too

Beyond tax there is a practical side that people remember late. An unregistered contract is harder to rely on as evidence: in a dispute over arrears, damaged property or the date a tenant must leave, you arrive with a document you never recorded anywhere. The tenant is not protected either in that situation, but the one with more at stake usually loses more.

A separate problem shows up when selling the property or applying for a loan, when rental income would be useful as demonstrable income. It cannot be demonstrated. Officially it never existed.

What to do if your contract is not registered

The sequence is simple, but take the details to the SFS, because every case depends on the status of the parties, the period, and who remits the tax.

Sign a written contract with full identifiers: IDNP for an individual, IDNO for a company. Register it with the SFS and ask there how to close off past periods if the letting has already been running. After that, pay by the 25th and keep the contract, the payment schedule and the receipts together, attached to the property.

That last part sounds dull, but it is exactly where reconciliation breaks. When the tax service compares the contract against incoming payments, a gap is visible immediately, and the explanation is yours to give.

With more than one unit, manual tracking gives out sooner than you would expect: every contract has its own registration deadline, its own payment date and its own tenant. The tax calculator gives you the monthly and yearly amount, and KX Estate keeps contracts, schedules and reminders per unit.

Sources: SFS via MOLDPRES, 15 August 2026 and 12 May 2026; SFS, January 2026. This is not individual tax advice: confirm the current rate and your own deadlines with the SFS or an accountant.