site.btaThis Year's Tax Freedom Day Will Be May 6

This Year's Tax Freedom Day Will Be May 6

Sofia, January 9 (BTA) - By May 6, 2016, Bulgarians will theoretically have earned enough income to pay their annual taxes, according to a forecast by the Institute for Market Economics (IME). This will be the nation's Tax Freedom Day, the day of the year when, figuratively speaking, people stop working for the government and begin working for themselves, IME said. It is the time by which the public purse would be filled up if the government collected all income from the nation at once.

The method for calculating these symbolic dates is relatively simple: the revenues going into the consolidated national budget (not counting external aid) are measured against the country's gross domestic product (GDP). The numbers are only taken from official data or forecasts by the government. The reason for excluding external aid, which comes primarily from the EU, is that it does not originate directly from Bulgarian taxpayers' money, the Institute explained.

The recent years have seen a steady tendency of extension of the period until the Tax Freedom Day, which means that taxes for the people increase. This process couples with an increase of the tax deficit after 2013.

In 2016, Bulgarians will produce an average of 241 million leva in GDP every calendar day, based on the official projections used in the national budget scheme for 2016. This means that it will take 126 days in the year to produce the projected over 30 billion leva in national revenues for the public purse.