Bulgaria: What Taxpayers Need to Know After the Euro Changeover

The annual campaign for filing personal income tax returns under Article 50 of the Personal Income Tax Act is underway. This declaration covers a wide range of income, including salaries and civil contracts, sole trader activity, farming, authorship and licensing rights, crafts, freelance work, rental income, interest, property sales, taxable benefits, dividends, share income from abroad, and other taxable sources.

Following Bulgaria’s accession to the eurozone, this year’s procedure has a specific feature. Income earned in the previous year is declared in Bulgarian levs, while the tax due on that income is paid in euros, exclusively through cashless methods. Payments can be made online using a bank card or via a POS terminal at an office of the revenue administration.

The general rule after the introduction of the euro is that tax returns, declarations under the Gambling Act, and declarations for mandatory social security contributions related to an already completed tax or insurance period must state amounts in the currency that was officially in force at the end of that period. In practical terms, this means the lev remains the reporting currency for periods that ended before the euro became Bulgaria’s official currency. The same approach applies when submitting corrective declarations for those periods.

A typical example is declaration form No. 1, “Data on the insured person,” for December 2025. Although it is submitted by January 25, 2026, the declared social security income must be shown in levs, since the reporting period ended while the lev was still the national currency. The same principle applies to monthly VAT returns. Likewise, income earned by individuals in 2025 is reported in levs in the annual tax return filed in 2026.

A different rule applies when the declared period ends during or includes the phase of dual circulation of the lev and the euro. In such cases, all monetary amounts in tax and social security declarations are indicated in euros. This rule also covers corrective submissions.

For instance, declaration form No. 1 for January 2026, filed by February 25, must contain social security income figures in euros. Monthly VAT returns follow the same logic. For income received in 2026, when the euro is already the official currency of Bulgaria, the annual personal income tax return submitted in 2027 will be completed entirely in euros.