Three years after the National Revenue Agency (NRA) started checking the sources of income of wealthy Bulgarians, the NRA office in the south-eastern Bulgarian town of Haskovo reported that 14 cases of discrepancies between property ownership and declared income have been found, Bulgarian news agency BTA said on September 1 2008.

The NRA office in Haskovo has checked 16 Bulgarians, all of which owned newly-built and up-scale housing and commercial properties. Of them, 14 will be subject to tax audits after tax inspectors found they were in in possession of undeclared assets or had submitted inconsistent tax returns, BTA said.

Similar checks as the ones in Haskovo have been launched in Plovdiv, Sofia, Varna and Bourgas, NRA's Silvia Genova told The Sofia Echo.

“These checks are not something that we at the headquarter in Sofia have decided to do nationwide but are regular part of the work of every regional branch,” she said. “We will check people who have bought real estate wort at least 100 000 euro and who have bought motor vehicles worth at least 80 000 euro.”

As part of the checks, NRA inspectors first make a shortlist of those who should be checked. “We gather public information about properties owned by these people by using all kinds of sources, such as municipalities or the Registry Agency where information about the acquisition of real estate is filed."

Then we will invite the people on the list for a conversation at NRA and we will ask them plain and simple the question where the money for the acquisition has come from. If they present conclusive information, such as a bank loan for example, the check will be over. If they give us no proof, than we will start a tax audit into their incomes,” Genova said.

She expected that checks could be over by the end of the year. “But I can not give an exact time frame”.

The sanction that people with undeclared income could face was up to eight years imprisonment, depending on the amount of money they failed to declare, and confiscation of the property.

In other news, NRA's head Maria Mourgina said that companies who produce or trade alcohol, fuel and tobacco products will be checked whether they have paid VAT over the goods traded, BTA said. The checks will happen in close cooperation with Customs Agency (CA) officials.

This was agreed at a September 1 2008 meeting in the Black Sea  town of Bourgas between NRA and CA, BTA said.

A number of companies and warehouses will be checked and the goods they own will be recorded. After this, NRA inspectors will check whether companies had paid VAT on the goods.

To improve coordination NRA and CA have agreed to exchange information on a regular basis.