Flat income tax. No brackets, no surprises as you earn more.
Comes off your income first, automatically. No receipts needed.
The window to register once you start working.
What it actually is
Bulgaria lets independent professionals work without setting up a company. You register yourself, you invoice under your own name and number, and you pay tax on what you earn. There is no company to run, no annual accounts to file, and no accountant strictly required.
The part that surprises people is the deduction. Before your income is taxed, a fixed percentage comes off as expenses — and you do not have to prove any of it. No receipts, no records of what you spent. It is a flat allowance, granted because you are self-employed.
So the headline rate is 10%, but you never pay 10% of what you invoice. After the allowance and your social contributions, what actually leaves your account is meaningfully less.
The 25% and the 40%
This is the one thing worth reading twice, because almost every guide online gets it half right.
Most consulting and service work
You do work for clients and invoice for it. Advice, development, engineering, translation, medical work, and so on.
When you create and license something
Writing, design, music, film, photography — where what you sell is the right to use something you made. Also performing artists, traditional craft work, and, since January 2026, lawyers and notaries.
The difference is fifteen points of your taxable income, every single year. And which one applies is not decided by your job title — it is decided by what your contracts actually hand over to the client. A developer who assigns the code they wrote and a developer who bills for hours can end up in different boxes.
This is the part people get wrong on their own, and it is the part we settle before your first invoice. It is far easier to set up correctly than to unwind two years later.
See what you would keep
Put in what you invoice, pick roughly what kind of work it is, and the calculator shows your take-home — plus the euro difference between the two allowances.
Open the calculatorWhat we do for you
Work out whether this fits
Not every kind of work can be done this way — trading in goods, for instance, belongs in a company. We tell you honestly which side you are on before anything is filed.
Settle your allowance
25% or 40%, based on what your contracts actually say. Where it is close, we will tell you what would need to change to land on the better side of it — legitimately.
Sort out the order of things
You need a Bulgarian personal number before you can register, and that comes with your residence. For EU nationals it is quick. For everyone else it has to be planned first.
Do the registration
Two registrations, both within seven days of starting: one that gives you the number you invoice under, one with the tax office. We file them.
Set your contributions sensibly
You choose the level you contribute on, within limits. It affects your monthly cash and your pension, and it is worth a two-minute conversation rather than a default.
Tell you when to stop being a freelancer
There is an income level above which a company simply works out better, and a turnover level at which VAT registration becomes compulsory. We will flag both before they arrive.
Is this you?
Worth a conversation
- You are moving to Bulgaria and want to keep invoicing clients abroad
- Some of what you sell might be creative or licensed work
- You are not from the EU, or you are but have not registered here yet
- You are still paying social contributions in another country
- You are unsure whether a company would suit you better
You can probably do this yourself
- You already live here and have your personal number
- Your work is plainly ordinary service work
- You have an electronic signature and an accountant already
- You are nowhere near the VAT turnover level
If you are in the right-hand column, we will say so rather than take the work. It is a genuinely self-service procedure for people whose situation is straightforward.
Why go to a law firm for this
The filing is administrative — anyone can press the buttons. What is not administrative is the question underneath: what kind of income is this, and what does your contract actually transfer. That is what determines your allowance, and it is what a tax inspector looks at years later, when the contracts are long since signed.
We are a Bulgarian law firm rather than a registration agent, so the contract and the tax position are handled by the same people. That matters here more than it does in most registrations, because the two are the same question wearing different clothes.
Questions people ask
Do I really not need receipts?
Correct. The 25% or 40% is a statutory allowance, not a claim you substantiate. You do not collect receipts for it and nobody asks to see them. It is one of the genuinely simple things about the system.
How long does the whole thing take?
The registrations themselves are a matter of days once your documents are in order. If you still need residence and a personal number, that step sets the pace — quick for EU nationals, longer if an immigration route is involved.
Can I do this before I move?
Not entirely. You need a Bulgarian personal number first, and that comes with registering your residence here. What you can do in advance is get the sequence planned so nothing waits on anything else.
What about social contributions?
They are the larger part of what you pay, and they run on a level you declare within a statutory range rather than automatically on your full income. If you are already insured in another EU country, that can change the picture entirely — worth mentioning when you write to us.
Would a company be better?
Sometimes. Broadly, freelancing wins at lower and middle income because there is nothing to maintain; a company starts winning higher up, or when you need to keep profit in the business. We have a calculator that compares the two on your own numbers.
Does this make me a Bulgarian tax resident?
No — that is a separate question with its own rules, and registering here does not answer it by itself. We cover tax residence separately.
If you like the detail
The registration, in order
Every stage, the documents, and where applications typically stall.
The crossoverWhen a company starts to win
The income level where freelancing stops being the cheaper option.
Coming from the EUWhich country insures you
What happens to your social security while you are moving between systems.
Tell us what you do
A few lines is plenty — what your work involves, where your clients are, and your nationality. We will tell you whether this route fits, which allowance you should be on, and what has to happen first.
The legal basis, for those who want it
The categories of people who may register this way, and the conditions for anyone not on the statutory list, are set out in §1(29) of the Supplementary Provisions to the Personal Income Tax Act. The expense allowances of 25%, 40% and 60% are in Art. 29(1) of the same Act; the 40% rate for lawyers and notaries was introduced with effect from 1 January 2026.
Registration is in the BULSTAT register kept by the Registry Agency and with the National Revenue Agency as a self-insured person, both within seven days of starting the activity. Contributions are 27.8%, or 31.3% with optional sickness and maternity cover, on a monthly base between EUR 620.20 and EUR 2,300 from 1 August 2026 (EUR 550.66 and EUR 2,111.64 before that date). The compulsory VAT registration threshold is EUR 51,130 of annual turnover under Art. 96(1) of the VAT Act, in force from 1 January 2026.
This page is general information as at August 2026, not advice on your circumstances. Which allowance applies to a particular activity depends on facts and contracts this page cannot see.