Bulgaria VAT Calculator (ДДС) — 2026 Rates in Euro

Bulgarian value-added tax is данък върху добавената стойност, universally shortened to ДДС (transliterated DDS). The rate has been 20% for a long time; what changed in 2026 is the currency it is counted in.

The euro changeover, read as a VAT problem

The Council of the EU took its final decisions in July 2025 and Bulgaria became the twenty-first member of the euro area on 1 January 2026, at the irrevocable conversion rate of 1 EUR = 1.95583 BGN. Through January 2026 both currencies circulated: shoppers could pay in lev but received change in euro. Since 1 February 2026 the euro has been the sole legal tender, ending 146 years of the lev. The obligation to display prices in both currencies — same font, same size, same colour — ran from 8 August 2025 to 8 August 2026 and has now expired.

None of that touched the rates. The VAT Act still sets 20% and 9%. But every monetary figure in the system moved: invoices have been issued in euro since 1 January 2026, VAT returns and the sales and purchase ledgers are filed in euro, and the registration threshold is now quoted as a euro number. A Bulgarian price that looks different from last year's moved because of conversion, not because of tax.

Converting a legacy lev price without losing a cent

The conversion rule has one hard edge: the 1.95583 factor is never rounded. You divide by the full six-figure rate and round the result to the nearest cent. Everything downstream — the net, the tax, the gross — should then be derived from that single rounded euro figure. Convert the net and the gross independently and you can end up a cent adrift, with a document where net plus VAT no longer equals gross.

Businesses also had to pick a rounding convention — line by line, or on the invoice total — and apply it consistently, posting any variance to a dedicated account so an auditor can follow it.

What Bulgaria actually taxes at 9%

Bulgaria runs one of the narrowest reduced-rate schedules in the EU. Three things sit at 9%:

• Hotel and similar accommodation, including campsites and other overnight lodging
• Books, textbooks and periodicals on physical or electronic media, including e-books and academic journals
• Baby foods and baby hygiene products, nappies included

The list stops there. Restaurants are not on it: the temporary 9% rate for catering, tourism and gyms was rolled forward year by year through the pandemic and finally lapsed on 31 December 2024, so eating out has been taxed at 20% since 1 January 2025. Nor are domestic energy, passenger transport or medicines, all of which several neighbouring member states discount. If a Bulgarian supplier charges you 9% on something outside those three categories, ask for the legal basis before you claim the input tax.

Registration: a euro figure and a calendar-year test

The domestic threshold is €51,130 — arithmetically the old BGN 100,000 limit carried across at the fixed rate. Two procedural details changed alongside it in 2026:

• Calendar-year measurement. The test now looks at accumulated turnover in the current calendar year or in the previous one, rather than a rolling 12-month window. That is easier to run off annual accounts, but it removes the smoothing a rolling window gave seasonal traders — a strong summer on the Black Sea coast can now tip a whole year over the line.
• A seven-day application window. Once you cross the threshold the registration application is due within seven days, tighter than the old “by the 7th of the following month”.

Businesses not established in Bulgaria get no threshold at all and register before their first taxable supply. Separately, the EU cross-border small-enterprise scheme lets a business established elsewhere in the EU trade into Bulgaria without a Bulgarian registration, provided it stays under €51,130 in Bulgaria and under €100,000 of Union-wide turnover and has filed a prior notification in its home member state.

Filing: the 14th, and the two ledgers

The Bulgarian tax period is the calendar month, with no quarterly option. By the 14th of the following month a registered business files — and pays — the VAT return, and it never travels alone. Bulgaria has required transaction-level ledgers since long before SAF-T became fashionable: a дневник за продажбите (sales ledger) and a дневник за покупките (purchase ledger) accompany every return, plus a VIES declaration where you have made intra-Community supplies or cross-border B2B services. All three now carry euro values.

SAF-T instead of a B2B e-invoicing mandate

Bulgaria's neighbours went one way and Bulgaria went the other. Croatia and Romania both built real-time invoice clearance platforms; as of August 2026 Bulgaria still has no domestic B2B e-invoicing mandate. Electronic invoicing is permitted and is mandatory only towards public bodies (B2G).

The lever Bulgaria pulled instead is the Standard Audit File for Tax. Mandatory SAF-T reporting started on 1 January 2026 for large enterprises, with a six-month grace period on first submissions. The monthly package — general ledger, accounts payable and receivable, sales and purchase invoices, and payments — is due by the 14th, the same date as the VAT return, which means the two data sets have to reconcile before either is sent. Fixed-asset data goes in annually and inventory movements are produced on request from the National Revenue Agency. Medium-sized enterprises are drawn in during 2027, and the regime reaches almost all taxpayers by 2030, with micro and budget entities the main carve-outs.

Bulgarian VAT calculation formulas

The calculator above applies these two equations. Substitute 1.09 for 1.20 to work at the reduced rate.

Add 20% ДДС (net to gross)

Remove 20% ДДС (gross to net)

Bulgaria's euro timeline at a glance

Alongside the changeover the Consumer Protection Commission monitored the prices of 101 frequently purchased products daily and published them, precisely because the risk in any changeover is not the tax rate but the quiet rounding of shelf prices in the seller's favour. If you are checking a Bulgarian receipt from 2026, the ДДС line should still resolve cleanly at 20% or 9% — see our guide to working out VAT backwards if it does not.