On April 18, 1840, Bulgarians begin paying tithes to the Sultan. The last few Bulgarian governments should think about this, emphasizing on the way and on the way that today's Bulgarians pay one of the lowest income taxes - 10%.
In 1840, the Sultan's government - the Sublime Porte decided to carry out a tax reform. The goal was to replenish the treasury in order to meet the expenses of the bloated administration. The step was bureaucratically effective - unification of the tithe. This marked the beginning of a widespread description of the property and income of the Bulgarian population as part of all nationalities in the Ottoman Empire.
It should be noted that the tithe was one of the main Bulgarian taxes, paid from the Middle Ages to the beginning of the 20th century.
According to it, peasants were taxed with one tenth of agricultural products and small livestock. It was a tax in kind, but at certain moments in the development of the Bulgarian state it was also collected in money.
After the fall of Bulgaria under Ottoman rule, the tithe was preserved, it was called yushur and covered all agricultural products. After the Liberation, the tithe continued to be collected and was established as an important source of income with the Tithe Law of 1880.
But let's return to the tax reform of the Ottoman reform. It will directly support the struggle of the Bulgarians for their own exarchy and church independence from the Ecumenical Patriarchate.
The creation of the Bulgarian Exarchate is the result of the long-standing struggle to gain church independence. This became a fact after Sultan Abdul Aziz issued a decree on the Exarchate on February 28, 1870.
Until the liberation of Bulgaria, according to Article 10 of the firman, the Exarchate included all areas in which the Christian population wished to pass under its spiritual authority. Thus, the Ottoman Empire officially recognized the Bulgarian nation before the world and determined its ethnic borders. The Bulgarian nation is internationally legally recognized.