The mandatory requirement for excise duty stamps for liquor and tobacco products for export was dropped on Wednesday with the passage of the transitional and final provisions of the amendments to the Tax Procedure Code by Parliament.

Tobacco products for sale in duty-free shops will be sold only with a "for duty free only" stamp rather than with special paper bands.

The MPs also adopted a new table for calculating the tax for vehicles as of January 1, 2002. For automobiles, the tax will depend on the engine power adjusted by a ratio based on the year of manufacture. The ratio is 1 for cars produced before the end of 1988, 1.5 for those produced between 1989 and the end of 1994 and 2.8 for cars produced after the beginning of 1995.

For cars of up to 50 horsepower the charge will be 0.20 leva per 1 horsepower, 0.50 for cars with 50-150 horsepower, and for cars of over 150 horsepower - 0.90 leva.

The tax for buses will depend on the number of seats (50 leva for up to 22 seats and 100 leva for over 22 seats). Vehicles that are not used will pay no tax if the owner has returned its registration papers by the end of the previous year.

The tax authorities may refuse to deduct a tax credit where they establish that the supplier does not have tax registration or is a non-existent tax entity. Deduction of a tax credit may also be refused if the supplier has not charged the amount of the tax within the period prescribed by law.

Opening a VAT account will be mandatory, but using such an account will be optional, Parliament decided.

Relaxed terms of tax credit recovery (within 45 days) will be applicable when a person has paid at least 80 per cent of the tax required for the period through a VAT account. The normal period of tax credit recovery is three months.

Persons violating the rules of issue of fiscal slips or cash receipts, or using a fiscal memory storage device which has been tampered with, will be barred from running a certain type of business for one month, irrespective of the fine and/or other punishments envisaged in the specific case.

The MPs repealed a requirement to impose VAT on subsidies allocated by the Tobacco Fund to tobacco growers.