MPs voted to reduce the threshold for registration of companies under the Value Added Tax Act from 166,000 BGN to 100,000 BGN, BTA reported.
The provision from the draft State Budget Act was adopted on second reading with 126 votes “for“, 76 “against“ and 25 “abstains“.
The proposals of Martin Dimitrov and Assen Vassilev to drop the provision in question were rejected in the hall. This is the VAT threshold for small businesses and the liberal professions, the proposal is for this threshold to remain at 166 thousand leva and not fall to one hundred thousand leva, said Assen Vassilev in a re-voting procedure on the proposal made by his colleague Martin Dimitrov to drop the text.
Earlier, the Minister of Finance Temenuzhka Petkova explained that in the current situation, the Ministry of Finance believes that the measure would yield results in view of the ambitions regarding improving VAT collection.
The deputies also rejected the proposals of the MP from “Vazrazhdane“ Dimo Drenchev for a zero rate on bread and for a 9% VAT for restaurant and catering services.
The discussions on the draft budget for 2025 proposed by the government continued for almost 12 hours. During the discussion, the deputies adopted a proposal to end the debates after everyone who had registered with the chairman of the session, Dragomir Stoynev, had made their statements. Dragomir Stoynev ended the debates at 3:15 a.m. after an exchange of remarks between the leader of "Vazrazhdane" Kostadin Kostadinov and the MP from "Ima takvi narod" Pavela Mitova about what abuse of law means and whether "Vazrazhdane" is violating the principles of the rule of law with the 38 thousand proposals they submitted before the second reading of the budget.
After the report of the parliamentary committee on budget and finance on the proposed State Budget Bill was presented in its entirety on Wednesday evening, the deputies postponed the debates and votes on the texts to Thursday evening. After the discussion ended, the MPs began voting on the texts of the second reading of the state budget bill.