About the State Fees

The list of all adopted bills during 2007 (available here, in Bulgarian only) makes a very interesting reading. It includes a description of the bills according to the object of regulation. Thus we could find out, for example, how many new bills, regulations and decrees of the Council of Ministers or amendments of these are published: in the area of planting materials (6), pensions (3), new tractors (5), motor vehicles (18), medications (6), for additional funding (5), additional budget credits (8), banks (6), blasting materials, fire arms and ammunitions (4) etc.

This which comes to attention is the number of times bills have been adopted/amended related to the collection of state fees. The list shows that 28 changes have been passed, most of which are to increase the size of the fees.

What are the fees representing?

• The fees must cover the costs of the administration for the services provided and for the produced documents, certificates etc.
• Sometimes the fees act as a "deterrent" to the people from misuse of the time and resources of the administration
• The fees are mandatory for clearly defined services in the Bill for the state fees, and are defined in a decision of the Council of Ministers and naturally – there are exceptions in the bill itself. According to the Bill, it does not apply to the fees collected by the state enterprises, as well as the fees collected according to the Bill for protection of the environment, the Bill about the railroad transport, the Bill for safe use of atomic energy and the Bull on waste management, the Bill for the see spaces, internal waterways and ports of Republic of Bulgaria and the Bill about the protected territories.

Revenues to the national budget from state fees

Source: Ministry of finance

Note: * The exchange rate is fixed to 1Euro = 1.95583 levs

However, what is the reality?

• Since the administration has a natural incentive to create additional work in order to justify its existence, there are services for which fees are due, which logically must not exist, since this represents over-involvement of the State in the economic life
• There are fees for services, which must be removed from the "portfolio" of the administration, i.e. the fee for the driver license exam for motor vehicles, for actions and services provided by the court bailiffs and translation of document from a foreign language into Bulgarian and vice versa;
• Some of the fees are much higher than the costs of the respective administrative service, which is against the logic of defining their size;
• Part of the services provided by the administration for which fees are paid, could be performed by the private sector (registrations, certification services etc.), but due to the state monopoly this is not possible. This by itself gives the opportunity to define the size of the fees which could be lower due to the competition.

The result is that although the fees are the better alternative for revenues to the administration, which is paid only by the user, not by everybody, as it is with the taxes, in Bulgaria the fees are a significant load for the people and businesses. The fees are used well by the administration as a source of revenue, without however reducing the funds paid every year for the existence of the administration itself. Quite the opposite, in addition to the increasing costs of the administration there is an increase of its numbers, which in turn is a real danger for subsequent increase in the monopoly of the services, provided by it for which we again pay state fees.