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Sat, May 26 2012
Bulgarian Customs vow to process goods sent from outside the EU within 20 minutes
Milen Keremedchiev, head of Bulgarian Posts, said the reason for the bureaucratic hell at Customs was the lack of coordination between Bulgarian Posts and Customs Agency
Photo: Tsvetelina Angelova
As of January 25 2010, all goods received from the US at Sofia Customs will be processed at one desk within 20 minutes, Customs Agency and Bulgarian Posts agreed on January 14 2010, Bulgarian-language Dnevnik daily said.
The speeding up of the hellish bureaucratic procedure one currently has to follow to retrieve goods ordered online from the US will come as a result of a pilot project the two institutions agreed to launch.
This project comes as a reaction to the public outcry caused by a story published on Dnevnik.bg website on January 8 2010 by Elenko Elenkov, who described what he had to go through when collecting a box of t-shirts that he had ordered from the US.
He lost half-a-day going from one desk to another at Sofia Customs, paying several fees for which he hardly got any explanation from the grim customs officers.
The public outcry met the support of Finance Minister Simeon Dyankov, who described the bureaucratic situation as terrible and said that he was going to test the system himself by ordering something from the US but not in his own name.
Sofia Customs, which processes about 60 per cent of all the goods arriving from abroad, will open two desks dealing with shipments sent from outside the EU. One of the desks will process only goods that cost between 15 and 150 euro, for which VAT must be paid.
The other desk will process goods of more than 150 euro in value, where duties must also be paid. In this case, a tax declaration is required and the client must get an Economic Operation Registration and Identification (EORI) number. This will happen at the same desk, unlike in Elenkov's case, when he had to go to more than a dozen desks.
Banks will no longer serve as intermediaries with all taxes collected by Bulgarian Posts directly.
The pilot project will be launched for three months and will mark the start of a new system of processing international goods at Customs.
The speeding up of the hellish bureaucratic procedure one currently has to follow to retrieve goods ordered online from the US will come as a result of a pilot project the two institutions agreed to launch.
This project comes as a reaction to the public outcry caused by a story published on Dnevnik.bg website on January 8 2010 by Elenko Elenkov, who described what he had to go through when collecting a box of t-shirts that he had ordered from the US.
He lost half-a-day going from one desk to another at Sofia Customs, paying several fees for which he hardly got any explanation from the grim customs officers.
The public outcry met the support of Finance Minister Simeon Dyankov, who described the bureaucratic situation as terrible and said that he was going to test the system himself by ordering something from the US but not in his own name.
Sofia Customs, which processes about 60 per cent of all the goods arriving from abroad, will open two desks dealing with shipments sent from outside the EU. One of the desks will process only goods that cost between 15 and 150 euro, for which VAT must be paid.
The other desk will process goods of more than 150 euro in value, where duties must also be paid. In this case, a tax declaration is required and the client must get an Economic Operation Registration and Identification (EORI) number. This will happen at the same desk, unlike in Elenkov's case, when he had to go to more than a dozen desks.
Banks will no longer serve as intermediaries with all taxes collected by Bulgarian Posts directly.
The pilot project will be launched for three months and will mark the start of a new system of processing international goods at Customs.
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Bulgaria to simplify customs clearance procedures
A pilot project in Sofia aims to simplify the procedure for clearing goods shipped from EU and non-EU countries to Bulgaria.
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Hello,, live in varna and i m going to buy ipod touch from Usa,it costs me about 200usd(inc. shipping).
dhl is the shipping company which brings my ipod from USa.
So my question is,Should i pay taxes for it if yes how much is it?
I just sent my mother in Bulgaria a gift for her birthday by UPS. The customs is asking her to waste her time and be paying in order to receive it. I have already paid shipment with UPS. I was born in Bulgaria but now an American citizen. I have seen examples of bribery and corruption of the Bulgarian Customs agents before, what an embarrassment to have anything to do with this country and its mafia.
halleluja, if they actually pull this off i will be amazed! The current gauntlet of bureaucracy simply puts me off of ordering anything from the internet here.
All sounds like science fiction to me, normal post never is delivered to my mailbox still closed, always opened and wouldn't be the first time what was inside is missing. One time waiting for a box of shirts from Germany it took customs 3 weeks to simply move it 200 mtr from the central station to the customs office. I also had to pay again and again even after everything was already payed for in Germany.
No such problem in Varna. One of the best and most polite customs offices I've run across. They do inspect, but are certainly not bullies like in Sofia.
I wish they would at least close the package after they take what they want from it. Most times our postal worker delivers loose items that belong in a box together. Most time letters(from the U.S.) come to me open. They are always open if they are double envelope invitations.
Dyankov was lucky to get it his items at all. I order a small machine part worth $100 from the US and it simply never arrived.
The supplier says he regularly ships to other European countries without items going missing.
Given the Bulgarian Post Office keeps such meticulous written records of items in its possession the only place it could have gone missing was in the Customs on entry.