Bulgaria Taxes for Expats and Digital Nomads (2026)

Bulgaria tax residency: 183 days or your center of life

Under the residence rules of the Personal Income Tax Act, you are a Bulgarian tax resident if any 1 of these applies, whatever your citizenship:

• More than 183 days in Bulgaria during the year. The day you arrive and the day you leave each count as a day in the country. Time spent only on study or medical treatment does not count.
• Your center of vital interests is in Bulgaria. The National Revenue Agency weighs your family, your property, the place you work or run a business from, and the place you manage your assets from.
• A permanent address in Bulgaria. On its own this is not enough: a person with a Bulgarian permanent address whose center of vital interests is elsewhere is treated as non-resident.

The tax authority judges residence case by case, weighing all of your circumstances together. That means there is no safe number of days for someone whose partner, home and business have all moved to Sofia. If 2 countries both treat you as resident, the tie-breaker in the tax treaty between them decides which one taxes your worldwide income.

Bulgaria's 10% flat tax for freelancers, worked through

Bulgaria has no income tax brackets. The annual tax is 10% of the tax base at every income level, with 1 exception that matters for the self-employed: a sole trader (ET) registered under the Commerce Act pays 15%.

Most freelancers register instead as practitioners of a free profession, and for them the law sets a 25% statutory expense deduction in place of real costs. The social contributions you paid during the year come off the base as well. Lawyers, notaries and people earning author or license fees get a 40% deduction instead of 25%.

Social security is the bigger line for most people. Self-insured people born after 1959 pay 27.8% (14.8% for pensions, 5% for the universal pension fund, 8% for health) on insurable income that, from August 1, 2026, sits between €620.20 (about $706) and €2,300 (about $2,620) a month. Sickness and maternity cover at 3.5% is optional.

The cap does the heavy lifting. Social security stops at €7,306 (about $8,310) for 2026 however much you bill, and the 25% deduction grows faster than the 15% of real costs we assume, so the share of profit you hand over falls as revenue rises. At $50,000 of revenue, social security is almost 3 times the income tax; at $250,000 it is less than half of it.

Foreign income and remote work once you live in Bulgaria

Residents pay Bulgarian tax on income from Bulgaria and from abroad, and there is no exemption for newcomers and no remittance basis. Foreign freelance fees and salary go into the same 10% base as Bulgarian income, while dividends from Bulgarian and foreign companies bear a separate 5% final tax. Tax already paid abroad on the same income is credited, or relieved under the treaty with the country that charged it.

The catch for remote workers runs the other way too. Bulgarian law treats income from work and services performed on Bulgarian territory as Bulgarian-source wherever it is paid, and it counts regular freelance work done in the country as a fixed base even without an office. The months you spend coding in Bansko for a client in Berlin are Bulgarian income in a year you never become resident. Where a tax treaty with your home country applies, its business profits article decides whether Bulgaria can actually collect.

Filing in Bulgaria: the deadlines a freelancer meets

The tax year is the calendar year. The National Revenue Agency's rules for free professions have you make 2 registrations (BULSTAT, then the National Revenue Agency), pay social security monthly and tax quarterly, then square both in the annual return.

David's note

I tell people to budget for Bulgarian social security before they budget for the 10%. Below about $120,000 of revenue it is the bigger of the 2 bills, and it falls due every month while the income tax comes quarterly. If your income arrives in lumps, that monthly rhythm strains cash flow far more than the rate does.

Running your own company from Bulgaria

A Bulgarian EOOD, the single-member limited company, pays 10% corporate tax, and dividends paid to an individual bear a 5% final tax that the company withholds. Profit you take out in full therefore bears 14.5% in Bulgaria before any social contributions: on $100,000 of profit that is €12,744 (about $14,500).

The Bulgarian company registration process is cheap and remote. The state fee is €28.12 (about $32) for an online filing, and a Bulgarian lawyer holding your written power of attorney can file for you, so you never have to fly in. The manager can be of any nationality and live anywhere.

Once you are resident, dividends from a foreign company you own also bear the 5% final tax, on the gross amount, with credit for tax the other country withheld. An owner who moves to Bulgaria can keep an existing company abroad and draw its profits at that rate, as long as the company's own tax position survives the move.

Where the company is run from matters as much as where it is registered. An EOOD managed from your laptop in Lisbon gives Portugal a case that the company is resident there or has a permanent establishment there. At 10%, the company also counts as low-taxed under most EU controlled foreign company rules, so an owner living in a high-tax EU country can be taxed at home on its profit.

The digital nomad permit adds its own limit. The 2025 amendments to the Foreigners Act grant it to non-EU nationals who work for an employer outside the EU, own more than 25% of or manage a company outside the EU, or provide remote IT services as self-employed, and holders may not work for anyone in Bulgaria. A Bulgarian EOOD therefore cannot be the business that qualifies you for the permit.

For a resident who wants a company anyway, paying yourself dividends from an EOOD and billing as a free-profession freelancer land in the same 15% to 25% band at $100,000 of revenue. The freelancer pulls ahead as revenue climbs, because the social security cap stops growing while the 25% deduction keeps growing.

US citizens in Bulgaria: the treaty helps, social security does not

The US and Bulgaria have an income tax treaty in force but no Social Security totalization agreement, so a self-employed American pays into both systems: Bulgaria's 27.8% and US self-employment tax of 15.3%. The foreign earned income exclusion of $132,900 for 2026 cuts US income tax, or you can credit the Bulgarian income tax instead, but the exclusion does not reduce self-employment tax. You still file a US return every year.

The costly mistakes in Bulgaria

The second expensive mistake is registering as a sole trader (ET) when the free-profession route is open to you. A sole trader pays 15% on business profit, against 10% after the 25% deduction for a free profession, and the gap widens with every euro you earn.

The third is banking. Bulgaria has been on the FATF list of jurisdictions under increased monitoring since October 2023. In June 2026 the FATF found that it had substantially completed its action plan, but it stays listed until an on-site visit confirms the reforms, and until then some foreign banks and payment providers run extra checks on Bulgarian companies.