{"schemaVersion":1,"passportCode":"BG","passportUrl":"https://multipassrank.com/passport/bulgaria","scope":"Selected country-topic summaries; not a complete account of citizenship law or personal tax liability. These facts do not change mobility scores.","review":{"decision":"approved","reviewer":"/root/top20_italy_spain","reviewedAt":"2026-09-17","recheckBy":"2026-12-16","candidateSha256":"8e5cd81e0b1714d370da38a03756384ed9736e5b967ec452de93b09f95ac0fd0","notes":"Independent review of all 17 retained official authorities and all six topics. Removed one redundant Romanian consolidated-Act source after repeated web, Node and curl access failures; no preview or author-only read was treated as independent verification. The accessible updated Law 14/2025 fully supports the affected clauses through Article I points 1, 3, 8, 22-23 and Article XIV, so only source references and locators changed. Checked Croatia's eight continuous registered years plus permanent status, release exceptions, limited foreign-education B1 proof, over-60 exemption and 15-question civic test against the current FAQ and operative amendments/regulation. Checked Croatian home possession versus habitual presence, state-service scope, treaty qualification and TI/TU directions. Checked Romania's 2025 ordinary settled-status/residence requirements, absences, qualified reductions, interview and protective-measure exceptions, separate restoration/descent B1 rule, oath exceptions and pending-case transition; future electronic-filing provisions are not treated as current eligibility changes. Read ANAF's actual computer consolidation through OUG 38/2026 by public HTTP and its actual 2025 guide, verifying worldwide/source scope, first-day triggers, foreign-employment exclusion, non-treaty departure tail, questionnaires and capped treaty credit. Checked Bulgaria's citizenship Act through June 2026, five years since permanent OR long-term permission, conduct/livelihood/release conditions and presidential decree; the September 2026 exam notice corroborates the linked 2015 regulation without establishing a CEFR equivalence. Downloaded and read the NRA tax statute's DOCX body despite its .rtf URL, preserving its March 2026 edition caveat and corroborating Articles 4-8 with both live NRA pages. No passport-only tax conclusion, blanket exemption, approval guarantee or proposed-rule inference was accepted. Candidate schema and exact hash are checked separately before handoff; no application artifact, deployment or unrelated review was changed."},"reviewScope":"A common review is provided only when all topics share one approval. Otherwise consult each topic's review; no collection means no review.","reviews":[{"decision":"approved","reviewer":"/root/top20_italy_spain","reviewedAt":"2026-09-17","recheckBy":"2026-12-16","candidateSha256":"8e5cd81e0b1714d370da38a03756384ed9736e5b967ec452de93b09f95ac0fd0","notes":"Independent review of all 17 retained official authorities and all six topics. Removed one redundant Romanian consolidated-Act source after repeated web, Node and curl access failures; no preview or author-only read was treated as independent verification. The accessible updated Law 14/2025 fully supports the affected clauses through Article I points 1, 3, 8, 22-23 and Article XIV, so only source references and locators changed. Checked Croatia's eight continuous registered years plus permanent status, release exceptions, limited foreign-education B1 proof, over-60 exemption and 15-question civic test against the current FAQ and operative amendments/regulation. Checked Croatian home possession versus habitual presence, state-service scope, treaty qualification and TI/TU directions. Checked Romania's 2025 ordinary settled-status/residence requirements, absences, qualified reductions, interview and protective-measure exceptions, separate restoration/descent B1 rule, oath exceptions and pending-case transition; future electronic-filing provisions are not treated as current eligibility changes. Read ANAF's actual computer consolidation through OUG 38/2026 by public HTTP and its actual 2025 guide, verifying worldwide/source scope, first-day triggers, foreign-employment exclusion, non-treaty departure tail, questionnaires and capped treaty credit. Checked Bulgaria's citizenship Act through June 2026, five years since permanent OR long-term permission, conduct/livelihood/release conditions and presidential decree; the September 2026 exam notice corroborates the linked 2015 regulation without establishing a CEFR equivalence. Downloaded and read the NRA tax statute's DOCX body despite its .rtf URL, preserving its March 2026 edition caveat and corroborating Articles 4-8 with both live NRA pages. No passport-only tax conclusion, blanket exemption, approval guarantee or proposed-rule inference was accepted. Candidate schema and exact hash are checked separately before handoff; no application artifact, deployment or unrelated review was changed."}],"coverage":{"citizenship":"reviewed_scope","taxes":"reviewed_scope"},"topics":[{"code":"BG","topic":"citizenship","title":"Bulgaria Citizenship Requirements","summary":"Bulgaria's ordinary naturalisation clock starts with permanent or long-term residence permission. Language evidence, livelihood and conduct are required, with limited exceptions to releasing another citizenship.","scope":"Selected adult ordinary naturalisation requirements under Article 12 of the Bulgarian Citizenship Act, as published through June 2026; descent, marriage-related reductions, protection and exceptional grants are separate.","jurisdiction":"Bulgaria: Bulgarian citizenship","routeType":"naturalisation","facts":[{"id":"residence","label":"Five years since settled permission","text":"The ordinary applicant must be an adult and have obtained permanent or long-term residence permission at least five years before applying. This is not five years from any first visit or temporary residence permit.","state":"conditional","sourceIds":["top20-bg-citizenship-act"],"locator":"Article 12(1)(1)-(2)","constraint":{"value":5,"unit":"years","basis":"permanent_residence","cohort":"Article 12 ordinary applicant: measured since permission for permanent OR long-term residence; not total residence since initial immigration"}},{"id":"conduct-means","label":"Livelihood, criminal and security checks","text":"Income or an occupation must support the applicant in Bulgaria. Bulgarian convictions or pending proceedings for intentional public-prosecution offences can disqualify, subject to rehabilitation. Serious public-order, public-morality, public-health or national-security concerns require refusal even where other conditions are met.","state":"conditional","sourceIds":["top20-bg-citizenship-act"],"locator":"Article 12(1)(3)-(4) and Article 19"},{"id":"renunciation","label":"Release rule and nationality exceptions","text":"Release from the previous citizenship is normally required, or must occur upon Bulgarian acquisition. Exceptions include spouses of Bulgarian citizens, EU/EEA/Swiss citizens and citizens of countries covered by a reciprocal treaty. Another country's retention rules still need checking.","state":"conditional","sourceIds":["top20-bg-citizenship-act"],"locator":"Article 12(1)(6) and 12(2)"},{"id":"language-proof","label":"Education or citizenship-language evidence","text":"Specified Bulgarian school or higher-education documents can establish language knowledge; other applicants use the Ministry-regulated certification process. The published written exam has 20 questions in 60 minutes, requiring 12 correct answers. The regulation provides an oral alternative for blind applicants, specified disability groups and those over 70.","state":"conditional","sourceIds":["top20-bg-language-regulation","top20-bg-language-exam"],"locator":"Ordinance 5 Articles 2-6; September 2026 examination notice on format and pass threshold"},{"id":"cefr-unresolved","label":"No verified CEFR equivalence","text":"The regulation describes elementary normal communication, and the exam notice states a question-based pass score. Neither reviewed source maps that requirement to a CEFR level. No A1, A2 or B1 equivalent is asserted.","state":"not_established","sourceIds":["top20-bg-language-regulation","top20-bg-language-exam"],"locator":"Ordinance 5 Article 6(2); examination notice, assessment criteria"},{"id":"application-decree","label":"Personal filing, interview and decree","text":"The application is filed personally with the Justice Ministry or a Bulgarian diplomatic or consular representation, with an interview. Naturalisation is effected by a presidential decree taking effect when issued; satisfying residence alone does not confer citizenship.","state":"conditional","sourceIds":["top20-bg-citizenship-act"],"locator":"Articles 29(1)-(3) and 36"}],"limits":["Some family, birthplace, descent and protection cohorts qualify under different provisions. No five-year total immigration-to-citizenship guarantee or ordinary investment shortcut is inferred.","The residence constraint includes long-term residence permission as expressly stated in its qualification; it must not be displayed as a permanent-residence-only rule.","The language regulation's displayed consolidation is through 2015, and it remains linked by the official September 2026 exam notice. Disability, overseas examination and education-proof arrangements require the applicable procedure, not a universal written-test assumption."],"review":{"decision":"approved","reviewer":"/root/top20_italy_spain","reviewedAt":"2026-09-17","recheckBy":"2026-12-16","candidateSha256":"8e5cd81e0b1714d370da38a03756384ed9736e5b967ec452de93b09f95ac0fd0","notes":"Independent review of all 17 retained official authorities and all six topics. Removed one redundant Romanian consolidated-Act source after repeated web, Node and curl access failures; no preview or author-only read was treated as independent verification. The accessible updated Law 14/2025 fully supports the affected clauses through Article I points 1, 3, 8, 22-23 and Article XIV, so only source references and locators changed. Checked Croatia's eight continuous registered years plus permanent status, release exceptions, limited foreign-education B1 proof, over-60 exemption and 15-question civic test against the current FAQ and operative amendments/regulation. Checked Croatian home possession versus habitual presence, state-service scope, treaty qualification and TI/TU directions. Checked Romania's 2025 ordinary settled-status/residence requirements, absences, qualified reductions, interview and protective-measure exceptions, separate restoration/descent B1 rule, oath exceptions and pending-case transition; future electronic-filing provisions are not treated as current eligibility changes. Read ANAF's actual computer consolidation through OUG 38/2026 by public HTTP and its actual 2025 guide, verifying worldwide/source scope, first-day triggers, foreign-employment exclusion, non-treaty departure tail, questionnaires and capped treaty credit. Checked Bulgaria's citizenship Act through June 2026, five years since permanent OR long-term permission, conduct/livelihood/release conditions and presidential decree; the September 2026 exam notice corroborates the linked 2015 regulation without establishing a CEFR equivalence. Downloaded and read the NRA tax statute's DOCX body despite its .rtf URL, preserving its March 2026 edition caveat and corroborating Articles 4-8 with both live NRA pages. No passport-only tax conclusion, blanket exemption, approval guarantee or proposed-rule inference was accepted. Candidate schema and exact hash are checked separately before handoff; no application artifact, deployment or unrelated review was changed."},"url":"https://multipassrank.com/passport/bulgaria/citizenship","disclaimer":"General information, not legal advice or a finding of eligibility. Requirements depend on the route, applicant and filing date. Verify the official instructions before applying."},{"code":"BG","topic":"taxes","title":"Bulgaria Tax Residence and Foreign Income","summary":"Bulgarian tax residence is determined independently of nationality through address, presence, vital interests and specified overseas assignments. It normally changes the income-tax scope from Bulgarian sources to worldwide income.","scope":"Selected individual residence and income-scope rules from current NRA guidance, corroborated against its Act consolidation through March 2026; not an annual-rate calculation, corporate-tax guide or individual treaty opinion.","jurisdiction":"Bulgaria: individual income tax","facts":[{"id":"residence","label":"Residence tests do not depend on citizenship","text":"Domestic tests include a Bulgarian permanent address, presence exceeding 183 days in any twelve-month period, a Bulgarian centre of vital interests, or specified assignments abroad by Bulgarian state bodies or enterprises and accompanying family. The permanent-address rule has an important foreign-vital-interests exception.","state":"conditional","sourceIds":["top20-bg-tax-residence","top20-bg-tax-act"],"locator":"NRA resident definition; Personal Income Tax Act Article 4(1), (5)"},{"id":"presence","label":"Strictly more than 183 days","text":"The presence test applies to the year in which the 183-day threshold is exceeded. Entry and exit days count as days of presence. Stays exclusively for study or medical treatment are excluded from this test, not necessarily from the other residence tests.","state":"conditional","sourceIds":["top20-bg-tax-residence","top20-bg-tax-act"],"locator":"NRA presence-counting paragraphs; Article 4(2)-(3)"},{"id":"vital-interests","label":"A Bulgarian address is not conclusive","text":"A person with a Bulgarian permanent address but a centre of vital interests outside Bulgaria is not resident under the stated exception. Family, property, work or business activity and where property is managed are relevant to locating those interests.","state":"conditional","sourceIds":["top20-bg-tax-residence","top20-bg-tax-act"],"locator":"NRA centre-of-vital-interests explanation; Article 4(4)-(5)"},{"id":"scope-source","label":"Worldwide residents; Bulgarian-source non-residents","text":"Residents generally face tax on domestic and foreign income; non-residents on Bulgarian-source income. Work or services performed in Bulgaria and income from Bulgarian real estate are source examples. The place where payment is received does not determine source by itself. Exemptions and treaties still apply.","state":"conditional","sourceIds":["top20-bg-tax-scope","top20-bg-tax-act"],"locator":"NRA obligations and Bulgarian-source sections; Articles 6-8, especially 8(2), (10), (12)"},{"id":"double-tax-relief","label":"Double-tax relief depends on the treaty","text":"Depending on the applicable treaty, relief may use foreign-tax credit or exemption with progression. The NRA identifies dedicated annual-return schedules for these methods. This does not establish that every income item must be declared or that foreign tax is always fully refunded.","state":"conditional","sourceIds":["top20-bg-tax-scope"],"locator":"NRA section on methods for eliminating double taxation and annual-return schedules"}],"limits":["A Bulgarian passport does not itself prove tax residence or exempt overseas income. Treaty residence, the particular income category and statutory exemptions need individual review.","The Act file is served as DOCX despite its .rtf URL and is expressly identified by its March 2026 consolidation date. These selected rules are also stated on the currently accessible NRA guidance pages; no claim is made that the download contains every later amendment.","Rates, allowances, social insurance, special business regimes and filing calculations are outside this baseline. The source page's shortened description of days during a year is not used to replace Article 4's any-twelve-month-period rule."],"review":{"decision":"approved","reviewer":"/root/top20_italy_spain","reviewedAt":"2026-09-17","recheckBy":"2026-12-16","candidateSha256":"8e5cd81e0b1714d370da38a03756384ed9736e5b967ec452de93b09f95ac0fd0","notes":"Independent review of all 17 retained official authorities and all six topics. Removed one redundant Romanian consolidated-Act source after repeated web, Node and curl access failures; no preview or author-only read was treated as independent verification. The accessible updated Law 14/2025 fully supports the affected clauses through Article I points 1, 3, 8, 22-23 and Article XIV, so only source references and locators changed. Checked Croatia's eight continuous registered years plus permanent status, release exceptions, limited foreign-education B1 proof, over-60 exemption and 15-question civic test against the current FAQ and operative amendments/regulation. Checked Croatian home possession versus habitual presence, state-service scope, treaty qualification and TI/TU directions. Checked Romania's 2025 ordinary settled-status/residence requirements, absences, qualified reductions, interview and protective-measure exceptions, separate restoration/descent B1 rule, oath exceptions and pending-case transition; future electronic-filing provisions are not treated as current eligibility changes. Read ANAF's actual computer consolidation through OUG 38/2026 by public HTTP and its actual 2025 guide, verifying worldwide/source scope, first-day triggers, foreign-employment exclusion, non-treaty departure tail, questionnaires and capped treaty credit. Checked Bulgaria's citizenship Act through June 2026, five years since permanent OR long-term permission, conduct/livelihood/release conditions and presidential decree; the September 2026 exam notice corroborates the linked 2015 regulation without establishing a CEFR equivalence. Downloaded and read the NRA tax statute's DOCX body despite its .rtf URL, preserving its March 2026 edition caveat and corroborating Articles 4-8 with both live NRA pages. No passport-only tax conclusion, blanket exemption, approval guarantee or proposed-rule inference was accepted. Candidate schema and exact hash are checked separately before handoff; no application artifact, deployment or unrelated review was changed."},"url":"https://multipassrank.com/passport/bulgaria/taxes","disclaimer":"General information, not personal tax advice. Nationality, tax residence and source of income are different questions. Consult the tax authority or a qualified adviser for your circumstances."}],"sources":[{"id":"top20-bg-citizenship-act","publisher":"Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Bulgaria","title":"Bulgarian Citizenship Act: consolidation through State Gazette No. 55 of 16 June 2026","url":"https://mjs.bg/home/normdoc/2134446592","language":"bg","retrievedAt":"2026-09-17"},{"id":"top20-bg-language-regulation","publisher":"Bulgarian Ministry of Education and Science / Institute of Education","title":"Ordinance No. 5 of 3 September 1999 on Bulgarian language knowledge for citizenship, through 2015 amendments","url":"https://io.mon.bg/sites/default/files/uploads/docs/2015-03/NAREDBA_5.pdf","language":"bg","retrievedAt":"2026-09-17"},{"id":"top20-bg-language-exam","publisher":"Institute of Education, Ministry of Education and Science of Bulgaria","title":"Bulgarian language citizenship examination scheduled for 18 September 2026","url":"https://io.mon.bg/node/600","language":"bg","retrievedAt":"2026-09-17"},{"id":"top20-bg-tax-residence","publisher":"National Revenue Agency of Bulgaria","title":"Resident and non-resident individuals: personal income tax residence","url":"https://nra.bg/wps/portal/nra/taxes/godishen-danak-varhu-dohdite/mestni-i-chuzhdi-litsa/","language":"bg","retrievedAt":"2026-09-17"},{"id":"top20-bg-tax-scope","publisher":"National Revenue Agency of Bulgaria","title":"Resident and non-resident individuals: taxable sources and double-tax relief","url":"https://nra.bg/wps/portal/nra/taxes/okonchatelen-danak-varhu-dohodi/mestni-i-chuzhdestranni-litsa/mestni-chujdestranni-lica/","language":"bg","retrievedAt":"2026-09-17"},{"id":"top20-bg-tax-act","publisher":"National Revenue Agency of Bulgaria","title":"Personal Income Tax Act: published consolidation through State Gazette No. 30 of 27 March 2026","url":"https://nra.bg/wps/wcm/connect/nra.bg25863/e0daae38-32b9-40b7-8c21-ff7feed98935/ZDDFL%2B%281%29.rtf?MOD=AJPERES","language":"bg","retrievedAt":"2026-09-17"}],"indicators":{"scope":"These describe the publisher's statistical geography, not benefits acquired by holding its passport. Values from different years are not a like-for-like ranking. No combined quality-of-life score is calculated.","review":{"decision":"approved","reviewer":"/root/review_pass412","reviewedAt":"2026-09-22","recheckBy":"2026-12-21","candidateSha256":"39a387a50a2aabd1d22f731ee6cac6f5c5ca947272add45f874774511443a18c","notes":"Independently fetched the exact UNDP CSV, complete World Bank series and geography-registry responses, and parsed them using Ruby standard CSV/JSON rather than the author's parser. All 146 outcomes across 73 geographies match: 140 exact native values with provider names and years, and six explicit source-specific nulls (MC/MO HDI; VA/TW both). All ISO mappings and non-aggregate scopes checked, with absent registry entities explicitly qualified. Verified HDR2025/2023 latest HDI, WDI2024 observations and 2026-07-13 update, source licences, attribution, rounding disclosures and no endorsement. The initial candidate's decoded-text UNDP hash was held; this replacement preserves all independently checked observations, records explicit encodings and matches the independently downloaded original bytes: UNDP 61ed82e5b66c88dfca8ff9fac775c63981ecab6a254862af97acacc41c143117, WDI 19be3c9b22cbba7a453233aa0f98f86f0ca1437667a57e91e899d9d43e8a5784, registry d29d57f8adf954c5e2a1520a02fb2c7b45575d8db3bd327a9dff47d66914231c. Approval binds only these replacement candidate bytes; historic approvals remain unchanged."},"coverage":"reviewed_scope","observations":[{"code":"BG","providerEntityCode":"BGR","providerEntityName":"Bulgaria","geographicScope":"Publisher-reported national statistical geography; not every overseas territory or citizen abroad","metric":"hdi","sourceId":"undp-hdr2025","period":"2023","value":0.845,"availability":"available","definition":{"label":"Human Development Index","unit":"0–1","precision":3,"description":"UNDP's development measure; not a passport or relocation score."},"source":{"id":"undp-hdr2025","publisher":"UNDP","attribution":"UNDP Human Development Report 2025, composite indices time series. Selected observations; display rounded to three decimals. No endorsement implied.","title":"Human Development Index","url":"https://hdr.undp.org/data-center/documentation-and-downloads","dataUrl":"https://hdr.undp.org/sites/default/files/2025_HDR/HDR25_Composite_indices_complete_time_series.csv","licenceUrl":"https://hdr.undp.org/terms-use","licence":"CC BY 3.0 IGO","edition":"Human Development Report 2025","sourceSha256":"61ed82e5b66c88dfca8ff9fac775c63981ecab6a254862af97acacc41c143117","dataEncoding":"windows-1252"}},{"code":"BG","providerEntityCode":"BGR","providerEntityName":"Bulgaria","geographicScope":"Publisher-reported national statistical geography; not every overseas territory or citizen abroad","metric":"life_expectancy","sourceId":"wb-life","period":"2024","value":75.7609756097561,"availability":"available","definition":{"label":"Life expectancy at birth","unit":"years","precision":1,"description":"Population-level period estimate; not an individual prediction or healthcare-access rating."},"source":{"id":"wb-life","publisher":"World Bank","attribution":"World Bank: World Development Indicators, SP.DYN.LE00.IN; UN World Population Prospects, national statistical offices and Eurostat. Selected observations; display rounded to one decimal. No endorsement implied.","title":"Life expectancy at birth, total","url":"https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.LE00.IN","dataUrl":"https://api.worldbank.org/v2/country/all/indicator/SP.DYN.LE00.IN?format=json&date=2020:2026&per_page=20000","licenceUrl":"https://data.worldbank.org/summary-terms-of-use","licence":"CC BY 4.0 with World Bank additional terms","edition":"World Development Indicators, updated 2026-07-13","sourceSha256":"19be3c9b22cbba7a453233aa0f98f86f0ca1437667a57e91e899d9d43e8a5784","dataEncoding":"utf-8","geographyUrl":"https://api.worldbank.org/v2/country/all?format=json&per_page=400","geographySha256":"d29d57f8adf954c5e2a1520a02fb2c7b45575d8db3bd327a9dff47d66914231c"}}]}}