2017/0367/BG
EC/EFTA
BG Bulgaria
  • N40E - Petroleum products
2017-11-06
2017-08-11
Fiscal devices (all electronic fiscal cash registers, fiscal printers and integrated automated business management systems)
Draft Regulation amending Regulation N-18 of 2006 on recording and reporting sales at retail sites by means of fiscal devices

Regulation N-18/2006 on recording and reporting sales at retail sites by means of fiscal devices was issued under Article 118 of the Value Added Tax Act and Article 9(1) of the Natural Persons' Income Tax Act.

The amendments and supplements can be categorised into three main groups:

The first group relates to the requirements to be met by persons selling liquid fuel or the sites where liquid fuel is sold and by manufacturers/importers of electronic fiscal memory devices and service companies in order to guarantee that unauthorised access to electronic fiscal memory devices and their components is not possible.

The second group of changes relates to specific requirements for electronic fiscal memory devices, in particular to the regulation of situations where said devices are prevented from operating due to communication between individual components being disrupted and the data are forwarded to the National Revenue Agency. These specific cases are set out in an addendum to Section VI, ‘Specific requirements for electronic fiscal memory devices’ in Annex 2 to Article 8(1)(2) of the Regulation.

The third group of changes relates to the introduction of the obligation for persons who record and report sales at retail outlets to submit real-time data, for each printed fiscal receipt, to the National Revenue Agency by means of a built-in remote link to the National Revenue Agency system. For the purposes of this change, when the link between the fiscal device and the National Revenue Agency is blocked and when a fiscal device undergoes repair work, the link has to be re-established by a service technician.

I. This draft Regulation contains the following proposed changes:

1. Changes in group one:

The drafting of a plan with the prior approval of the National Revenue Agency and the Bulgarian Institute of Metrology for each individual point of sale for liquid fuels incorporating all components of the electronic liquid fuel sales system and communications between them (central recording device, usage meters, hub/converter and tank gauging system). The plan is to be submitted to the bodies of the National Revenue Agency and to the Bulgarian Institute of Metrology for provisional approval and stored at the retail site. The aim of the provisional approval is to evaluate system safety with a view to reducing vulnerable points, i.e. opportunities for tampering. Furthermore, the supervisory authorities shall have information on the overall configuration of the system available at all times. This will allow them to compare the data with the real situation on site during subsequent inspections. Any change to the approved plan shall be subject to subsequent approval. Approving the plan is expected to limit the number of instances where traders tamper with the system resulting in unregulated sales of liquid fuels, i.e. sales which are not reported by the electronic fiscal memory system.

Servicing of the fiscal devices shall be carried out by service technicians having a unique service code issued by the manufacturer or importer. This measure aims to prevent unlawful tampering with the systems. In addition, information on the person who carried out the servicing on the electronic fiscal memory device in question shall be available at all times.

2. The second group of changes involves the introduction of new specific operating requirements for the devices so that when communication between individual components is disrupted, the system is prevented from operating. The changes also provide for a print-out of the most recent data from the component whose link to or communication with another component has been interrupted, and for these data to be automatically forwarded to the National Revenue Agency. They also provide for a print-out to be made and for data to be automatically forwarded to the Agency once the link/communication has been restored. This measure aims to prevent sales of liquid fuel that have not been recorded and reported by an electronic fiscal memory system.

The need for these legislative changes with regard to the activities of persons involved in selling fuel as end distributors has arisen from the findings of inspections of such outlets. The inspections noted sales being made without being reported in electronic fiscal memory systems. In many cases, communication between the main elements of the system had been interrupted, resulting in fuel being drawn and sold without being reported in the system to the National Revenue Agency. The main justification for the proposed changes in the draft legislation is to combat the concealment of revenue from the sales of liquid fuels at petrol stations and thus to prevent VAT fraud.

The aim of the regulatory changes is to prevent situations arising in which electronic fiscal memory systems are manipulated by disrupting the operation of individual components of the system, so as to prevent equipment being used in an unauthorised way allowing actual sales of fuel to go unreported.

3. The third group of changes, relating to the introduction of obligations for persons who record and report sales at retail outlets to submit real-time data about every printed receipt to the National Revenue Agency, provides that the Agency shall receive real-time information on sales which have been recorded and reported by fiscal devices. At the same time, each fiscal receipt issued shall print a two-dimensional QR code containing information identifying the individual sale. It is hoped that this code will foster public monitoring of the reporting of sales by retail outlets. This can be done by scanning the code and giving customers the opportunity to verify the sale reported to the National Revenue Agency.

The aim of the changes relating to the submission of data on each sale made at the retail outlet to the National Revenue Agency is to discourage sales that are not recorded and reported as stipulated, i.e. through the submission of real-time data on sales made in every retail site via a fiscal device.

The proposed draft act will indirectly affect the State budget by increasing VAT revenue. All other conditions being the same, it is expected that stricter controls on income from sales will lead to an approximate 10 % increase in VAT revenue in the State budget, or approximately BGN 150 million in absolute terms.

Compliance timescales.

1. In future, persons who will begin to use electronic fiscal memory devices will be under an obligation to use new approved systems which comply with the requirements of the legislation; those already using electronic fiscal memory devices at the time of the changes will be obliged to ensure their business complies with the changes. The new requirements are expected to be complied with by 30 September 2018. The deadline also applies to the obligation to submit data about each printed fiscal receipt to the National Revenue Agency.

2. Under Article 3 of Regulation N-18, persons registered under the VAT Act, with the exception of those already using electronic fiscal memory systems, are required to comply with the obligation to submit data about each printed fiscal receipt to the National Revenue Agency by 31 December 2018. All other persons, including those who record and report their sales using integrated automated business management systems, are required to do so by 30 June 2019.

According to preliminary data, persons will incur a one-off cost of BGN 122 million in relation to the above changes.

The draft Regulation does not implement standards under EU law.