VAT Registration Types and VAT Registration Procedure of a Bulgarian Company – part II

We will continue our previous post about the VAT registration types and VAT registration procedure of a Bulgarian company. If you have missed the first part please read it here first…

3. Registration procedure

According to VATA, Art. 101: “The registration shall be carried out by submission of an application for registration according to an Application form to the competent territorial directorate of the National Revenue Agency by the person, who is obliged or entitled to do the registration”.

In compliance with para 2 from the same article the application shall be submitted:
– personally, in case that the tax liable person is legally capable individual or a sole trader;
– by a person, who has PoA by a law, in case the tax liable person is a legal person or a cooperation;
– by a person, who is authorized according to articles of association, in case the tax liable person is unregistered partnership or insuring fund;
– by the fiscal representative under Art. 135 and in compliance with chapter IV from this study ;
– by a person, explicitly authorised by the persons under the above mentioned bullets by means of a notary certified PoA.

Upon receipt of the Application the authorities of the National Revenue Agency usually request additional documents and/or information from the applicant for the purposes of the registration (such as copy of the court registration or other registration document for companies established after 01.01.2008; turnover records; list of all employees; list of the assets available with the company; trial balances, rental agreements, etc.). Respectively, when applying for VAT registration, it is advisable that a certain set of documents (such as the listed above) are prepared in advance and filed together with the application form, because the process for preparing the whole application set may take some time. The VAT registration should be timely planned in order to avoid missing application deadlines and suffering penalties.

The statutory term for completion of the above VAT registration procedures is up to 14 days (in which the revenue authorities may request the additional documents) after the submission of the standard Application form before the respective revenue authorities.

The VAT registration date will be the date on which the respective certificate is received by the Bulgarian company. The Bulgarian company is NOT allowed to issue invoices with VAT on it before the registration date (i.e. during the registration procedure).

If a Bulgarian company acquires any assets before its VAT registration in Bulgaria, then the Bulgarian company would be generally entitled to refund the input VAT in respect of these assets, which are available with the Bulgarian company at the date of its VAT registration. In order to have the right to refund such VAT, the goods (assets) supplied to the Bulgarian company before the VAT registration date must be used for the economic activity of the Bulgarian company with a right to VAT credit. Additionally, a registration inventory form of the available assets has to be prepared in standard form as at the date of the VAT registration and has to be submitted within seven days to the authorities of the National Revenue Agency.

Please note that the VAT registration is usually performed by the company’s accountant or lawyer at the National Revenue Agency after the company has been established. After the VAT registration was completed, the Bulgarian company would be obliged to comply with the statutory documenting and reporting requirements as per the VATA and the AA.