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Property » Paid health insurance (NHS) contributions will be required upon selling personal property

A bill, adding new bureaucracy requirements A bill, adding new bureaucracy requirements to selling property, has been voted on first hearing in the Bulgarian Parliament. The amendments to the Health Insurance Act and Tax and Insurance Proceedings Code set a requirement that the seller of a real estate property and/or vehicles needs to present to the notary public a certificate from the National Revenue Agency, proving that all outstanding NHS contributions have been paid. If such certificate is not presented or it contains evidence of unpaid NHS contributions, the notary can refuse to certify the deal.

There has been discussions going on in the parliament on this matter. The opposition said that it is a restriction of private property and promised that they will bring the matter to the Constitutional Court for declaring these articles as unconstitutional.

Why (un)paid health insurance is a problem?

Generally speaking it is not a problem. It’s the additional document that needs to be presented to the notaries upon selling the property which can complicate the procedure. I have two things in mind that surely will become a problem:

(1) Foreigners are not health insured in Bulgaria, unless they are employed here or they are managers of active trading Bulgarian companies.
(2) Every foreigner who is health insured in Bulgaria has been granted a state number (not personal number of foreigner, but a special number in NRA systems). This is how NRA identifies foreigners. The other way is through their Bulstat numbers.

Ok, so NRA can use the Bulstat numbers to issue certificates. Fair enough. Many foreigners still don’t have Bulstat numbers since the agents, who sold them the properties didn’t tell them this obligation. If the property has been bough recently, there could be a small fine for missing the deadline. If the period is longer, there might not be a fine.


Complicating the property sale process

It’s understandable that the government what to increase the collection of NHS contribution, but complicating the property sale process is not the way forwards. As a friend of mine pointed out “soon if you don’t have a vignette sticker (road tax), they won’t allow you to sale your house”.

Having in mind the current term for issuing certificates from NRA (e.g. certificate for lack of outstanding taxes), I’d say the property purchase/sale process will be extended with a week or two.

really good article and find admin ...thank you

should be some interesting stories coming up of house sales ,if this is implimented !!!

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Unpaid health insurance contribution won’t influence property deals after all

After the Health Insurance Bill has been passed to the Parliament for voting, the controversial obligation for payment of all health insurance contributions upon selling a property was waived. After discussions in the Bulgarian Parliament, the MPs voted against the suggested amendment. Most of them considered it as unconstitutional and as restraining the right of private property (e.g. freedom of disposing property).

This amendment was suggested by the Ministry of Health as a measure for collection of the unpaid national health insurance contributions. The idea behind this suggestions was to increase the collection of health insurance contributions. However this would have burden the property deals with additional bureaucracy and wasted time for obtaining documents from NRA.

silly idea in the first place.

Just like most of their 'ideas' !!

I must agree the Bulgarians have most of their ideas off the wall but thank god they never make it to reality.

If you guys who are members of the EU state think it's hard, you want to see how much gobbledy gook I have to swallow! 600leva or so every year for five years before I can apply for residency..then at the end of the five years I find that even though I paid the full amount on time, every time, somehow the five years had shrunk to 4 years and 8 months, so I have to pay for another 6 month extension before I can apply for residency. I have been paying into the health system for 4 years but am still required to have private medical insurance..not been to a doctor for almost 12 years and am not looking forward to the first time I need one. Being married to a native Bulgarian and having 2 Bulgarian bred children makes not a lick of difference to my position or status.

well from 2002 to 2007 we were paying 600lv a year just for our yearly L/C after forking out for the "
D"
visa...plus yearly medical /health insurance....which after 4 yrs of paying it in we were told we did not qualify ...so your not alone on the

It sucks big time..it seems to be a game of how much they can leach out of us.