The Bulgarian legislation currently does not allow issuing of Internet gambling licenses. However, an amendment to the Gambling Act is submitted to the Bulgaria Parliament. The new clauses of the Gambling Act will allow Bulgarian and foreign companies to obtain Internet gambling license. Some of the new license requirements will be:

• all servers and electronic equipment has to be located physically in Bulgaria
• at least one of the servers which receives the traffic  data over the Internet, has to possess domain in .bg area.
• the gambling software needs to collect records of the users, as well as to have the ability to provide data to the Gambling Commission upon request
• each game, included in the Internet gambling license, has to match the requirements for the regular gambling, as described in details in the Gambling Act.

The status of the bill can be reviewed in the website of the Bulgarian Parliament

The process of obtaining a regular Gambling license consists of providing the necessary documents and applying with the Gambling Commission. Foreigners can also apply for gambling license. You can apply as a company, registered in EU or as a Bulgarian company (subsidiary of your original company). If your company is  registered neither in EU member country nor in Bulgaria, you need to match certain investment requirements before you obtain the gambling license. Depending on what games you want to develop, there are different options for gambling license: casino games, lotto games, bingo and keno, lottery, sport betting etc.

The tax on the gambling profit is flat 15%. The gambling tax excludes paying the corporate tax i.e. the gambling companies pay ONLY 15% gambling tax. Additionally you may want to get the dividend from the company profit, which will add 5% tax to the money you get from your gambling company.

Those of you who have companies registered before 1 Jan 2008 and haven’t done the re-registration, need to hurry. The Commercial Register Act regulates the deadline for re-registration is 31 Dec 2010.

If you fail to re-register on time, your company will be liquidated by the court and official state liquidator will be appointed. The consequence of this will be that your company’s assets will be sold on public tender and the liquidator’s salary will be paid out of that assets.

Don’t miss the deadline!  You can loose your property and you will bear liability for all expenses made in court for your company liquidation.

Off-the-shelf companies are not popular in Bulgaria. This is due to the fact that additional accounting expenses are involved. Off-the-shelf companies are dormant companies with nominee directors/shareholders and a registered business address in Bulgaria. The additional expenses are for filing annual tax declarations and annual accounts in the Commercial Register. Having the baove in mind, foreigners and Bulgarians, prefer to register a brand new company, rather than buy off-shelf one. Moreover, registration of a new LLC in Bulgaria takes just about 2 days.

If you intent to buy a startup business, having its first months behind, then you can buy that enterprise in two ways:

1. Buy the shares of the company via signed and notarized agreement or,
2. Bye the whole enterprise i.e. everything except the company name. This also will be done through a written and notarized agreement.

As from 20th October 2009, the minimum capital for registration of limited liability company (LTD) in Bulgaria is 1 Euro. The amendment in the Commercial Act will allow easier and less cumbersome registration of companies in Bulgaria.

Maria Georgieva is removed from Interlink’s management. The new management of the company promises that they will do their best to finish the projects that are already started. I’ve been in contact with them and they are far more cooperative than the previous ones.

All companies  has to prepare annual financial reports according to the Bulgarian and International Financial Reporting Standards. The reports of companies with turnover above EUR 1,000,000 are subject to compulsory audit.

Pursuant to Article 40 of the Accountancy Act all companies shall announce their financial reports to the Commercial register. You can read the provisions below:

Article 40      (Supplemented, SG No.96/2004, amended SG No. 105/2006)

(1) By 30 June on the following year, enterprises shall publish their annual financial statements and their consolidatedfinancial statements, their annual management report and their annual consolidated management report as adopted by thegeneral meeting of partners/shareholders or by the relevant body as follows:

1. merchants in the meaning of the Commerce Act , by filing and submitting them for the purposes of announcing them in the Commercial Register;

2. non-profit legal persons designated as operating for the public benefit: by filing for recordation and submitting themto the Central Register with the Ministry of Justice under the terms and following the procedure set out in the Non-ProfitLegal Persons Act;

3. the rest of enterprises, through a business publication or in the Internet.

(2) Following the procedure set out in paragraph (1), enterprises referred to in Article 38 shall publish:

1. their financial statements, in the form in which they were certified by a registered auditor;

2. their annual management reports, in the form on the basis of which the registered auditor expressed his/her opinion;

3. the auditor’s report on the statements and reports referred to in items (1) and (2).

(3) Following the procedure set out in paragraph (1), together with their annual financial statements, joint stockcompanies, partnerships limited by shares and limited liability companies shall also publish information on the proposal of themanaging body on the distribution of profit or for covering a previous year’s loss and the decision of the general meeting ofshareholders/partners on the allocation of profit for distribution or for covering a previous year’s loss.

(4) The annual financial statements of an enterprise which prepares consolidated financial statements shall be publishedconcurrently with the consolidated financial statements of the group, together with their respective annual managementreports.

All necessary documents for announcing the annual financial report of your Bulgarian company should be drafter be a professional lawyer .

The financial report DO NOT SHOW any details about your company. It shows only numbers without specifying the sources of your profit or the actual property, owned by your company.

If you happen to be a party in a lawsuit in Bulgaria, you should be aware of the following:

1. Don’t be impatient. Bulgarian Civil Proceedings Code regulates certain terms that have to be taken into consideration
2. The weakest part in a lawsuit is the delivery of subpoenas. All the papers which have to be delivered to the parties, are carried by employees of the court called “призовкари” (subpoena carriers) . The delivery employees are not limited to delivery terms, as the law assumes that there may be troubles finding the parties. That’s why a typical subpoena delivery may take about a month.
3. When a lawsuit is filed, there is one month period, which has to pass, before the judge sets a date for the first hearing. This is a period in which the defendant has to submit an answer to the claim. Please note that this period starts, as from the day the claim was delivered to the defendant.(See point 2 above)
4. The judge may “stretch” the lawsuit in several hearings, depending on how complicated is the case. Usually lawsuits have two or three hearings. The time between the hearings depends on the caseload of the particular judge. Usually its one or two months.
5. When the lawsuit is announced for resolving by the judge, there is a one month term during which the judge has to issue the court resolution.
6. If the resolution is not appealed, it enters into force and you may engage a law enforcement agent.

Of course the above is just a brief explanation of the lawsuit procedure in Bulgaria, but basically you don’t have to push your lawyer,because not everything depends on him/her.

We wish all our clients and prospect clients all the best. May the New Year 2008 brings a lot of joy and happiness to everyone. Happy New Year!

The British community in Bulgaria expands very fast. Most of the family couples buy countryside houses in poor condition and usually major (re)construction works are necessary before one can live in such house. The new owners hire local construction workers to do the rebuild but do not realize that sometimes they can be taken advantage of.

The British (or any other) expats must keep in mind that each assigning of construction works should be in writing. This shall secure the owner of the house in case of any unconscientious actions taken by the worker. And even more, if any damages are caused by the worker, the owner may require not only a reimbursement, but even a penalty if agreed.

The owner should ask an English speaking  lawyer to draft an agreement if the construction works are at a great scale and therefore a lot of funds are invested. It is better the agreement to be drafted bilingual. This will ensure that each party understands its rights and obligations.

The Bulgarian Parliament is now hearing a draft  law which stipulates that the Bulgarian State Gazette shall be published on the Internet. For the time being,  the State Gazette is published only on a hard copy which costs 0,80 Lev (approx. 0,40 EUR) per copy. The above fact is in collision with a principle stipulated in the Bulgarian Constitution: each Bulgarian citizen has the right to access state information in case not explicitly marked as classified.

Presently there are few companies which take advantage of the fact that State Gazette is not published online. They offer software applications which provide digitized copy of  all Bulgarian laws and thus making profit from information that should be public domain.

In case the draft law becomes law, each Bulgarian citizen will have free online access to the Bulgarian legislative database.