Bulgaria's personal income tax return: who files it and by when

Who has to file the Art. 50 return (and who doesn't)

The Art. 50 return, named after Article 50 of Bulgaria's Personal Income Tax Act (ЗДДФЛ), is the annual form every Bulgarian tax resident uses to declare income to NAP, the National Revenue Agency, beyond an ordinary payroll salary. It is easy to confuse with your company's annual return under the Corporate Income Tax Act: that one reports the company's profit and is due by 30 June. This one is personal, about you as an individual, not about your company.

• Sole traders (registered as ЕТ, an individual trading under their own name) declare their trading profit here.
• Freelancers and consultants working under a civil contract or on a fee basis, without an employment contract: designers, translators, architects, lawyers, and similar.
• Owners of a flat or premises rented out to tenants.
• Anyone with capital gains: selling shares, company stakes, crypto, or other assets above set thresholds.
• Anyone who received a dividend from a foreign company (more on this below).
• Registered farmers under certain taxation regimes.

You do not file an Art. 50 return if your only income is salary under an employment contract, where the employer already withheld and remitted the tax, or income already fully taxed at source with a final tax (a dividend from a Bulgarian company is exactly that case, see below). If you own an EOOD and only take a manager's salary plus a dividend from your own Bulgarian company, you typically owe no extra personal return for the dividend itself, but the return becomes mandatory the moment you also freelance on the side or collect rent.

Deadlines: 10 January through 30 April

The Art. 50 return is filed in a window running from 10 January to 30 April of the year after the one you are reporting on. For income earned in 2025, the deadline is 30 April 2026.

• The same date is also the deadline to pay any tax due, not just to submit the form.
• File electronically by 31 March and pay the tax due by the same date, and you get a 5% discount on that tax, capped at 500 BGN, about 255.65 euro.
• The discount disappears if you have outstanding public liabilities being collected through enforcement at the time you file.
• Miss the deadline and you face a fine or property sanction, typically up to 500 BGN (about 255.65 euro), plus interest on the unpaid tax from the day after the deadline.

Worth keeping straight: this is not the same date as your company's 30 June corporate return. Your personal deadline lands two months earlier, and the early-filing discount has its own even earlier cutoff.

How to file: e-ID, a qualified signature, or paper

The Art. 50 return is filed mainly online, through NAP's e-services portal, using one of two ways to authenticate.

• ПИК (a Personal Identification Code): a free code you get in person at a NAP office, or through online banking with a partner bank. It's enough for most individuals without a registered company.
• КЕП (a Qualified Electronic Signature): a paid certificate you likely already hold if you run a company or use cloud accounting and invoicing software.
• You can also file on paper at a NAP office, but that forfeits the 5% early-filing discount, even if you show up before 31 March.
• An accountant holding a formal power of attorney can file on your behalf using their own qualified signature, so you don't need to obtain one yourself.

For most small-company owners and freelancers, a PIN code (ПИК) is the simplest route, as long as you request it a few days before the deadline rather than on the morning of 30 April.

The 5% dividend tax: when you have to self-declare it

A dividend is a distribution of a company's profit to its owners, and it carries a flat final tax of 5% on the gross amount, regardless of size.

• Dividend from a Bulgarian company: the company itself withholds and remits the tax when it pays you. You do not include it in your Art. 50 return, it was already taxed at source and, for you, that's the end of it.
• Dividend from a foreign company: here the responsibility shifts entirely to you. You must calculate and pay the 5% tax yourself, and declare it in Annex 8, Part IV of the annual Art. 50 return, by 30 April of the following year.
• The rate is the same either way, but the process is not: a domestic dividend is silent as far as you're concerned, a foreign one requires you to self-assess and declare it actively.

Owners of an EOOD or OOD who draw profit mainly as dividends rather than salary, because 5% beats a combined 20%-plus on payroll with social contributions, need to watch this line closely, especially if part of their structure sits outside Bulgaria.

Tax reliefs: children, mortgages, donations

The Art. 50 return is also where you reduce your taxable base using the reliefs the law allows, claimed through Annex 10.

• Relief for children: a fixed reduction of the annual tax base for one, two, or three-or-more minor children.
• Relief for children with disabilities: a larger fixed amount, on top of the general child relief.
• Relief for young families with a mortgage: a reduction for mortgage interest paid during the year on a first home loan, on principal up to 100,000 BGN (about 51,129.19 euro), subject to age conditions for the spouses.
• Relief for donations: a reduction for part of the amount donated to hospitals, kindergartens, community centers, and other explicitly listed recipients, capped at a percentage of the annual tax base that depends on the type of donation.
• Reliefs for personal contributions to voluntary pension and health insurance, life insurance, and for cashless payments made during the year.

Reliefs can be combined, but each one requires specific supporting documents attached to the return: a receipt, a contract, a bank statement. A missing document usually means a lost relief, not just a slower review by NAP.

Your personal return is not your company's return

It's an easy pair to mix up: the company's annual return under corporate tax (the company's profit, due 30 June) and the personal Art. 50 return (your own income as an individual, due 30 April). If you own an EOOD and only take a manager's salary, you may owe no extra personal return this year at all. But if you also freelance, rent out property, or receive a dividend from abroad, the personal return is mandatory, and its deadline lands before your company's.

The short version: 30 April for the Art. 50 return, 31 March if you want the 5% discount, a PIN code or a qualified signature to file, and Annex 10 for every relief you can document.

Useful next reads:

How tax filing will work with FreeMe.bg
When you need an expert and what's included
Dividend vs salary: which one costs the owner less

FreeMe.bg tracks both your personal and your company's deadlines in one place, and flags an expert before it's too late for the discount, or too late for the filing itself. Log in with your Google account and see what applies to your situation.