At the last moment departmental stations were obliged to install fiscal memory and level measuring systems from 01.01.2015

With surprising changes, published on Christmas, lawmakers decided to aggravate the previously existing regime for departmental stations. The amendments to Article 118 of the Law on Value Added Tax (VAT) oblige them to be equipped with electronic fiscal memory, including level measuring system and a constant connection with the NRA. In practice, the law treats departmental stations, that are used for loading vehicles for their own use, as service stations - shops that sell fuel to multiple clients.

The owners of such departmental stations will have to choose between investing a substantial amount in the site or to stop using it and to refuel their cars from existing petrol stations, buying fuel at relatively high prices. The measure will aggravate with additional costs thousands of businesses, mostly from the branches transport, agriculture and construction. These companies, mostly small and medium, until now had to electronically declare the fuels in their tanks on the day of delivery, regardless of work days or holydays, via the so-called. Information system for Fuel Control to the NRA. It is therefore arguable whether the innovation will lead to higher tax collection and reduce the informal trade as these are pointed as the objective of the changes.
But there is no doubt regarding the manner in which the described amendments were adopted and enforced. From the date of promulgation to the entry into force there were 7 days, 2 of them work days. The minimum period of order, delivery and installation of the required systems fluctuates around 30 days, not including time for the introduction and selection of a suitable system. Thus, the lawmakers set thousands of companies, most of them flawless taxpayers, using departmental stations outlaw from January 1, 2015 and created conditions for chaos and administrative arbitrariness.

What is more, the fact that these variations in VAT, adopted by the transitional provisions of the Law on State Budget of the Republic of Bulgaria for 2015, were promulgated literally on the last working day of the National Assembly is more than suspicious. Two weeks earlier the National Assembly adopted amendments of the VAT Law, with many other changes, some of which were widely discussed. However, the change of art.118 was not included. Intentional or not, this "omission" shows the mediocre quality of the creation of laws in the country. Still, we have little hope that this will not be the case with their application.