From March 1 2010, Bulgaria’s National Revenue Agency (NRA) will e-mail, phone and SMS people who have unpaid fines with a warning to pay up or face prosecution.
 
This will include unpaid traffic fines. Failure to pay what is owed to the state would prevent people from borrowing from banks because they would not be able to get certificates from the NRA confirming that they have made all payments due, Bulgarian National Television said.
 
The move comes against a background of data on the NRA website showing that arrears payments by individuals and companies of sums owed to the state have doubled. These are debts proven by complete documentation, Bulgarian-language media reports said on February 2.
 
The NRA has absorbed the functions of the former State Receivables Collection Agency, along with the 6.5 billion leva in unpaid taxes, fees and fines that the agency was supposed to have collected.
 
Many of these debts were small sums, meaning that a cost-efficient way had to be found to collect them.
 
Dnevnik said that certificates of taxes paid were required in Bulgaria in many instances, including in applications to take part in public procurements, and when individuals and companies apply for loans from commercial banks.
 
NRA said that a system of trade-offs was to be introduced. Until now, those eligible for mortgage subsidy payments could not get them if their tax payments were in arrears. The agency intends changing this so that unpaid sums will be deducted from the mortgage support payments.
 
Tax law changes will enable the agency to seize and sell at auction the assets of those who have not paid their taxes. Before this, the agency could only attach bank accounts, motor vehicles and real estate but could not sell this property at auction.
 
"We are going to change significantly the way that we work, because in a crisis, our country needs more efficient recovery," NRA head Krassimir Stefanov was quoted by Dnevnik as saying.
 
"The main changes are that instead of using only coercive measures and treatment to get taxpayers to pay up, we will treat taxpayers as customers and use new technologies to keep in touch with individuals and businesses," Stefanov said.