Paghe locali e conformità contributiva in Bulgaria

Bulgaria is a member of the European Union and of the European Economic Area, which brings the employment of EU nationals under the social security coordination regulation and makes posting workable without prior work authorisation. The national scheme covers pensions, sickness, maternity, unemployment and accidents at work; it is funded by contributions collected by the Национална агенция за приходите (National Revenue Agency), which then transfers them to the managing bodies, chiefly the НОИ (National Social Security Institute) and the НЗОК (National Health Insurance Fund). Centralised collection makes the employer's reporting life appreciably simpler.

The country record here shows the lev as the currency; with the euro adoption timetable in motion, the currency in which salaries are paid should be confirmed as at the hiring date. Bulgarian is the language of contracts and filings, and official documents are in Cyrillic script.

No professional body governs accountancy or payroll: the activity is open, the only statutory constraint bearing on the qualifications and experience of the person who signs off financial statements.

Notification of the contract to the National Revenue Agency must be filed before the employee actually begins work. That sequence is the most commonly inspected point in Bulgaria: an employee found at their post without a registered notification puts the employer in a difficult position, whatever good faith is argued afterwards.

The employing vehicle has to be settled first, of course. An EU company may employ in Bulgaria without setting up a subsidiary, provided it registers as an employer with the Bulgarian authorities and assumes local reporting duties. Branch, subsidiary, or direct registration as a non-established employer: that decision comes at the outset.

A single monthly filing channel then carries both contributions and tax to the НАП, which keeps the number of counterparties low. Payslips must be produced and retained in the local form, income tax being withheld at source by the employer.

Mandatory particulars, duration, probation and notice are all fixed by the Bulgarian labour code; the language of the contract and the possible application of a sectoral collective agreement are checked at the same time.

Termination is subject to the same formal requirements as hiring: end-of-contract documents to hand over, service periods to record in the employment record, and the termination itself to notify.

The commercial register kept by the Registry Agency is freely and openly searchable. Bulgaria is in that sense a country where verification happens online, and a partner's or supplier's existence, officers and filed accounts can be checked directly without asking them for anything at all.

The central compliance document is the certificate under article 87(6) of the Tax and Social Insurance Procedure Code: it covers tax and social security position in a single instrument, which is unusual, but its validity is short. A file assembled over several weeks should therefore request it last.

Several names circulate in the local market for one and the same activity: счетоводна къща, счетоводно предприятие, or ТРЗ и личен състав, the last of these denoting payroll and personnel administration specifically. None of them corresponds to any authorisation; they say something about commercial positioning and nothing more.