site.btaRevenue Agency Detects Malpractices at 479 Commercial Outlets in Mountain Resorts since January

The National Revenue Agency (NRA) has detected irregularities at 479 commercial outlets in Bulgarian mountain resorts during the institution's winter control campaign starting January 3, the NRA press office reported on March 25. Fiscal control officers inspected over 1,500 eating, drinking and entertainment establishments, shops and hotels in Bansko, Razlog, Dobrinishte, Banya, Borovets, Smolyan and Pamporovo.

They uncovered such wrongdoings as failure to issue cash receipts, discrepancies between the information stored in the fiscal memory of cash registers and the amounts of cash available, sales documents not conforming to the rules, and incorrect VAT data (the VAT rate for restaurants was raised back to the standard 20% as of January 1 after years of applying a special rate of 9%). NRA drew up written statements of irregularities committed at 453 commercial outlets, and plans to penalize another 14 outlets. A total of 57 commercial outlets will be sealed.

Officers used the method of open inspection, meaning they said who they were and spent several days at the commercial outlets. They were thus able to monitor current revenues and compare them with earlier sales data. Inspectors also employed the mystery customer technique, which allowed them to establish beyond doubt that some commercial entities did not issue any documents for the sales they performed. Incorrect VAT data (9% instead of 20%) were detected in 243 restaurants. Failure to issue cash receipts was observed in 59 outlets.

If a consumer does not receive a cash receipt from a fiscal memory storage device, he has the right to withhold the payment for the purchase. This is envisaged in the Value Added Tax Act and is aimed to discourage revenue concealment and unfair competition and to ensure that consumer rights are protected.

Consumers can also exercise control over revenue reporting by using NRA's mobile application, NRA Mobile, to scan the QR code on a cash receipt. Non-issuance of cash receipts, issuance of false payment documents or such that do not meet the established standard, and any other tax and social insurance malpractices can be reported to the NRA Information Centre at 0700-18-700 or by email at infocenter@nra.bg.