The establishment of the unified European market has ensured the free movement of goods, employees, services and capital in Europe. This has resulted in several benefits for cross-border trade of goods, in particular for the removal of the obligation for submission of customs declarations within the European Union (EU). The lack of customs control has created the need for a different way of control of the trading within the Union, namely the introduction of the intrastate system.

I. What is Intrastate?

The intrastate system shall apply for collection of data for intra-Community dispatches from, or arrival of European Union goods on the territory of the Republic of Bulgaria. The system includes all Community goods, namely:

• goods, wholly obtained on the territory of the EU;
• goods, imported from non-EU countries, which have been released for free circulation in a Member State, i.e. being acknowledged as EU goods;
• goods, being obtained or manufactured in a EU state from the goods, pointed in the previous two points;

The terms “import” and “export”, used before, are being replaced by the terms “arrivals” and “dispatches” of goods. The arrivals include all movements of goods from another EU state to Bulgaria and the dispatches - all movement of goods from one country to another. Both terms are equal to the tax terms for “intra-community acquisition” and “intra-community suplies”.

II. Who is obliged to file an intrastate declaration and when?

The intrastate operators are persons, having the obligation to file declarations under the intrastate system. These are persons, registered under the VAT Act, who perform intra-community trade of goods in annual volumes, expressed in value above the thresholds for declaring separately dispatches and arrivals. The declaring threshold shall be determined by an order of the president of the National Statistical Institute, which is published in the State Gazette by 31 October of the current year. The thresholds of intra-community arrivals and dispatches are set separately. The obligation to declare the intra-community dispatches does not necessarily mean the obligation to declare intra-community arrivals and vice versa.

On 03.11.2022 The order of the Chairman of the NSI came into force, which implements changes regarding the thresholds for flows “Arrivals” and “Dispatches” for 2023, namely:

• Arrivals – BGN 700.000 – (value for 2022 – BGN 520.000);
• Dispatches – BGN 1.000.000 – (value for 2022 – BGN 780.000);

The intrastate declarations could be filed on an ongoing or annual basis.

An ongoing obligation to file an intrastate declaration arises when the obliged person reaches the threshold set in the order for the current year. In this case, such person will have to submit intrastate declarations as of the month, when this threshold was reached until the end of the calendar year. The first intrastate declaration shall be filed until the 20th day of the month, following the month, when the relevant threshold was exceeded. The following intrastate declarations shall be filed until the 14th day of next month. In case the threshold for the following year was exceeded, an intrastate declaration shall be filed for the whole next year.

The intrastate declarations shall be submitted to the National Revenue Agency electronically by the intrastate operator or any other authorized person. In the cases of technical obstacles, the declarations could be filed within the competent territorial directorate of the National Revenue Agency in a paper form, accompanied by an explanation letter. There are two types of intrastate declarations: initial declarations and such for corrections. When no arrivals or dispatches are being performed by the intrastate operator, a zero declaration for the relevant month shall be filed.

III. Compulsory requirements for the intrastate declarations

As already mentioned above, there are two types of declarations – such for arrivals and dispatches declaration.

The declaration contains the following compulsory data:

• special 8-digit commodity code from the Combined Nomenclature for the relevant year;
• receiving (dispatching) EU Member State;
• country of origin;
• type of the transaction - final purchase/sale, return of goods, replacement of goods, finance leasing etc.;
• terms of delivery, i.e. services included within the price (insurance, transport, freight costs, etc.);
• type of the transport - road, rail, sea and/or air transport etc.;
• nationality of the transporting vehicle;
• region of origin (consumption);
• net weight (in kg);
• quantity in a specific unit of measure, if such provided for in the Combined Nomenclature for that year;
• price/value (in BGN);
• statistical value (in BGN), if such required for the corresponding product;
• A new field has been added to the dispatches declaration from the beginning of 2022 - VIN number of the partner. This number is in fact an individual identification number assigned to the partner operator in the Member State of import;

It is important to be noted that negative values ​​of the intrastate declarations are inadmissible. The credit notification are not to be reported with negative values ​​within the declaration for the current month, but as a correction of the amount within the previous declaration, where the goods were declared. Any discounts regarding the goods shall not be included within the declaration.

IV. Statistical value

The statistical value is the value of the goods, calculated before the latter cross the Bulgarian border and includes all additional insurance and transport costs, accrued on the territory of Republic of Bulgaria for the dispatches or outside the territory of Republic of Bulgaria for arrivals.

Such value shall be reported only by the operators, trading with specific goods, explicitly mentioned within the Ordinance for application of the intrastate system, as well as by any intrastate operators, having exceeded the relevant thresholds for the current year, namely:

• for arrivals – BGN 11.000.000,- (value for 2022 – BGN 8.400.000);
• for dispatches – BGN 29.300.000,- (value for 2022 – BGN 18.600.000);

V. Administrative penalties and sanctions

Any intrastate operator, who fails to submit an intrastate declaration within the terms provided and/or declares false shall be penalised with the amount of BGN 500 - BGN 5,000. In case of further breach, the penalty will be imposed in double or triple amounts respectively.