History of the NRA
In this column you can find detailed information about the history and the chronology of changes related to the National Revenue Agency
1991
The tax administration was established as an independent structure in 1991. The first constituent legislative act was the Council of Ministers’ Decree No. 29/25.02.1991. The number of employees in the administration was set at 1 900 persons on the pay-roll. The second constituent legislative act was the Council of Ministers’ Decree No. 200/11.10.1991. It set the number of personnel in the administration at 8 000. Both decrees established the territorial tax departments, tax offices and tax bureaus.
1993
The statutory and procedural laws were adopted – the Tax Administration Act and the Tax Proceedings Act. In the same year re-organization of the scope, the number of staff and the number of tax offices and tax bureaus was undertaken.
01.04.1994
The Value Added Tax Act and the Excise Duties Act came into force. Special Tax Offices were set established to administer both acts. Specialized “Audit” units were also established.
01.07.1997
Tax offices for large taxpayers were organized.
01.08.1997
The special tax offices were closed.
The beginning of 1998
A rotation of the directors of offices was carried out in the cities with more than one tax office. The changes were followed by a campaign for administration of the new Local Taxes and Fees Act.
01.01.2000
The Tax Proceedings Act was enforced and it introduced the functional structure of the tax administration.
March 2000
The project for developing a National Revenue Agency (NRA) was started in compliance with the decision taken by the Bulgarian Government in October 1999 to integrate the functions of the Tax Administration (TA) with the functions of collecting social security contributions by the National Social Security Institute (NSSI).
The Council of Ministers adopted the concept of the development of the National Revenue Agency.
June 2000
The National Assembly (the Bulgarian parliament) adopted the National Revenue Agency Act (NRAA) and the respective Headquarters (HQ) was established to implement the project further.
June 18th 2003
A Loan Agreement was concluded between the Republic of Bulgaria and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (the “Revenue Administration Reform Project”), which was ratified by the National Assembly of the Republic of Bulgaria by a law, adopted on July 16th 2003.
May 2004
The Executive Board of the Agency approved the Strategic Plan of the NRA for the period 2004–2008. The vision, the mission, the principles and the shared values are set out in the Strategic Plan, which will guide the organization and its strategic objectives.
2005
The initiated in 2004 centralization of the activities in state taxes administration at territorial level was completed, as well as the transfer of the local taxes and fees administration to the municipalities. The integration of the “Collection” function of NSSI into the tax administration was prepared, whereby the activities related to the revenue part of the NSSI operations were brought together in a separate unit. A new Tax and Social Security Procedure Code was adopted and is applicable since 01.01.2006.
2006
Since January 1st 2006 the NRA started actually to operate and combined the collection and servicing of national taxes (income tax, patent taxes (final annual income taxes), VAT, corporate taxes) and the mandatory social security contributions (health insurance contributions, pension contributions, supplementary compulsory retirement contributions, etc.).
The administration of the excises went under the authority of the Customs Agency from the middle of year 2006.
Implementing a decision of the Council of Ministers a reduction of the staff of the NRA was undertaken and the number of the employees in the administration was brought to the number of 7 976 persons on pay-roll. The Intrastat system was implemented to collect data from the VAT-registered persons in relation to their commercial activities within the European Union.
2007
A Bulgarian version was implemented of the information system for exchange of information on VAT with the member states of the European Union – VIES.
2010
As of January 1, 2010 the State Receivables Collection Agency (SRCA) merged into the National Revenue Agency of Bulgaria. With this change the Revenue administration of Bulgaria started collecting all public and private state receivables. The NRA also undertook the obligation to represent the State in bankruptcy proceedings.