This is something for some of to get your teeth around .


Changes in car registration regulations in Bulgaria

Bulgarian Ministry of Interior (MoI) in preparing changes in the regulation for vehicle registration in Bulgaria. When car owner is changed, it is mandatory the new owner to register the car in the Police department, where new owner’s permanent address is. In order to avoid taxes and government fees, many new owners just pay for the car and drive it with a simple notarized power of attorney. The car documents stay on the name of the previous owner. This is common practice in Northern Bulgaria, where may Romanians buy cars from Bulgarian border cities such as Dobrich, Varna etc. According to official Romanian and Bulgarian government data more than 3500 cars with Bulgarian license plates are actively driven on the roads in Romania.

So why the Bulgarian Ministry of Interior considers this as wrong? A spokesperson of MoI says it’s because of the cheaper insurances and annual vehicle taxes. They consider this as draining of the national Insurance Guarantee Fund e.g. if an accident happens with such car the damages will be covered by the aforesaid Fund, instead of the insurer of the car. This is because there is no new insurer, since the new owner is not the actual legal owner of the car.

MoI will stop this “bad practice” by amending the regulation for registration of vehicles. The new owner has to register the car in his state. If doesn’t do that within two weeks period, the old registration will become invalid and driving the car will be illegal.

How how Romanians can keep their cars and low vehicle taxes and insurances?

The answer is to register a local limited company and later transfer the car to it. the company will be dormant and will act only as a holder of the car, so the car owner can benefit the low insurance and state taxes. This will be a relatively low one time investment, but this way they can keep the Bulgarian car license plates.