A phone call to a company in Sofia that owed 12 million leva in overdue taxes brought in the money, Bulgaria’s National Revenue Agency (NRA) said on August 31 2009.
 
Facing a worsening Budget deficit amid the economic crisis, and a widely-held perception that vast sums in taxes due have gone unpaid, the NRA is moving to gather revenue owed to the public purse.
 
Calling debtors to remind them that they have outstanding sums owing remains the preferred approach to defaulters, according to the Sofia office of the NRA.
 
Since the start of the year they have made 24 421 calls and held 13 704 meetings with individual and corporate debtors, the NRA said in a statement quoted by Bulgarian news agency BTA.
 
In January to July 2009, the sums owed to the Sofia NRA office dropped by 580 million leva.
 
The announcement emerged soon after the NRA said that it had developed special computer software to detect value-added tax fraud.
 
On August 28, the NRA said that 79 owners and managers of companies who systematically had failed to pay tax had been barred from leaving the country. In all, the 79 owed more than 72 million leva in unpaid taxes.
 
The NRA, which said that its inspectors were taking steps against business people who did not pay their debts, siphoned VAT or committed other forms of fraud, said that it had referred 53 cases to prosecutors.
 
The same day, Bulgarian-language daily Monitor quoted NRA executive director Krassimir Stefanov as saying that after the NRA and customs information systems were linked, the smuggling of goods had slumped.
 
On August 23, it was announced that tax and customs officers would be checking all goods entering or exiting Bulgaria from or to European Union countries. This is a response to an absence of checks after Bulgaria joined the EU in January 2007 having opened the way for tax and excise fraud.
 
The customs and tax teams would be reporting weekly to NRA chief Stefanov and the head of the National Customs Agency, the announcement said.