site.btaParliament Postpones by One Year Polluter Pays Mechanism for Calculating Waste Collection Fee

Parliament on Tuesday postponed by a year the entry into force of a new mechanism for calculating the waste collection fee based on the “polluter pays" principle. MPs passed conclusively amendments to the Local Taxes and Fees Act en bloc, submitted by Nikolay Nankov, Temenuzhka Petkova and Alexander Nenkov from GERB-UDF by 161 votes in favour, two against and four abstentions.

Under the amended provisions the polluter pays principle had to be applied from January 1 2025.

From January 1 2025, the waste fee would have gone between three and ten times in each Bulgarian municipality, one of the bill sponsors, Nikolay Nankov, explained last week. Now, the waste collection fee is calculated based on the tax assessment of the property, and not on the number of the occupants. 

The changes would provide extra time for the preparation of local authorities to determine the amount of the municipal waste fee, the authors of the bill said.