I have been told you do not need a bulstat number unless you need to declare income from renting your apartment. I am afraid this information is not correct. As a foreign owner of an apartment you DO need a Bulstat registration - whether you want to let it or not. Clairebear, as I have mentioned before the council tax depends on the tax value of your apartment. Since you did not supply this nobody can tell exactly how much it is. It also depends on whether you have your own bin and whether the apartment is for commercial use or private use.

many thanks uncle frank how is evo these days

Ivo has disappeared from Bansko.

Re: Tax on Property??Utilities Bills??Charges??
Hi You do not need to go to the Bulgarian Embassy to get the power of attorney and declarations signed. You can get it signed through a public notary British Public Notaries: http://www.thenotariessociety.org.uk/ this is a useful search engine to find your nearest public notary. http://www.notary.co.uk/our pricing http://www.local.co.uk/notaries If the POA is signed with a British Public Notary then an Apostille is required. Basically this means that the document with the notary seal has to go to the British and Foreign Commonwealth office for them to certify that the Notary if legit. The notary that I saw was local (I live in London) and they knew all about the apostille requirement and did it for me. The whole process cost £270 for the POA and the declaration to be witnessed and the Apostille. (Plus he was very cute) Hope this helps

So, today I paid my property and garbage taxes for the first time since taking ownership of my apartment in 2005. I met my interpreter outside the Municipality and went to the appropriate counter where I was asked for my bulstat number. I did not have one. But as it turned out you do not need one if you bought your place before 2006 so this saved me from at least some of the proceedure. We were handed a form to complete and after filling in several pages of details relating to me and my apartment the document was handed back to the clerk . Several minutes later I was presented with a bill for just over 400 Levs. If you are paying your taxes in person you will need the help of an interpreter as all the documents are quite complex and are in Bulgarian. The whole process took about an hour and a half and was quite painless.

If you don't have or don't know your Bulstat number you should bring your title deed.

How to pay online
Hi, just returned from Bansko and while there I paid my state tax at the muncipality office. Does anyone know if this can be paid on line or DD etc. My solicitor will pay it going forward on my behalf but the cost is more than the actual cost of the local taxes. Thanks

Electricity connection to new properties
Can anyone give me an idea of how long it is taking to get electricity connected at the moment or the process involved. The development we have bought in has received Act 16 but the developer is not giving us any details on when we can expect connection. Everything else is in place so very frustrating that this is holding this up. Thanks

Can I ask a question please. Do you pay a monthly charge to the electricity company on top of any usage of electricity?

I've been looking through various threads on the subject of property tax and can't find the answer I'm looking for. Apologies if it has already been dealt with! Here goes... We're due to receive Act 16 within the next month or so (allegedly!) and its my understanding that the property tax must be paid within a set period after this Act is issued. What is the time period? We need to find someone to pay the property tax on our behalf. Our solicitor won't do it as they are based in Sofia and don't deal with this issue. What's the best way of paying it? We live in Ireland and won't be going to Bansko again until next August (at the earliest!). We have our Bulstatt cards and our deeds. Is it possible to pay online, even the first payment? I would appreciate any advice on the above.

I can only tell you what we did which is that our solicitor dealt with it all. It was all paid at the time of signing the deeds at the transfer. We paid the notary via a bank transfer but again the solicitor dealt with it. If you want a good solicitor for some last minute advice, I would suggest you contact Emil Trifonov. He has a web site. He is a member of this forum and has acted for many people. I can personally vouch for his integrity and knowledge. If you email, you will always get an email back. Why not try him, he may not even charge for passing on knowledge. He may act at this final stage for you for a reasonable charge. It's so important to get it right and sometimes it's worth a little extra for peace of mind. Sorry I can't be of more help. Good luck

I can confirm Emil is excellent, we followed the same path as Eileen and it was smooth as silk dealing with Emil.

Many thanks for your replies. I should have mentioned already that we have our deeds and the actual purchase is complete, so that side of things is more or less complete. We are now trying to sort out the maintenance contract. We've paid the solicitor upfront for this to be sorted out, but to date, nothing has been sorted! We received a copy of this contract in May so you'd think at this stage, there would be some progress. I'm finding the whole thing really stressful! Unfortunately, we've paid the solicitor already so even though I really would like to change to a more competent solicitor, the costs are an issue. I don't think we'd get any refund if we made a switch! Would we be entitled to, I wonder? Our solicitor told us recently that we have to deal with the property tax ourselves - so that's the query I raised on this thread. The solicitor will register us with the tax authorities but won't actually pay the tax - that's where we're at! So, if this is the case, do we just need to get a tax number or something from our solicitor so that someone else could pay the tax on our behalf? Could we pay the propery tax online if we have a tax number? I don't even know if I'm asking the right questions here as we're totally in the dark on this subject. Any help is much appreciated!

Corolla, This maybe your municipality tax that you are talking about, this is like a community charge which includes garbage collection. The norm is that your lawyer would register you with the local authorities and then give you your Bulstat Number which is the reference needed to actually pay the tax in the TownHall. This can be done by anyone on your behalf.

Hi Uncle, Yes that sounds right. Our lawyer told us that once Act 16 is issued she will register us with the local authorities so I suppose its the municipality tax she's talking about. We have our Bulstat Cards and we have our Deeds too. So, is it possible for us to pay this tax online, once we're registered or do we need someone to physically go to the municipality office in Bansko to pay on our behalf? If we need to elect someone to do that, then who would you recommend?