Bulgaria's National Assembly voted 149 to 0, with 10 abstentions, to pass amendments to the country's Tax and Social Security Procedure Code that force crypto service providers to report detailed customer and transaction data to the National Revenue Agency. Not a single lawmaker voted against the bill, an unusually lopsided outcome for legislation that imposes significant new compliance obligations on an entire industry.
The near-unanimous margin reflects that Bulgaria wasn't really debating whether to adopt these rules, only how quickly to formalize what EU membership already required. The amendments transpose the bloc's DAC8 directive, which expanded the existing Directive on Administrative Cooperation to cover crypto assets, into Bulgarian law. Member states were supposed to have DAC8 transposed into national legislation by December 31, 2025, with the reporting framework applying from the start of this year. Bulgaria's final parliamentary approval lands more than eight months past that deadline, making this less a proactive policy choice than a belated catch-up with an obligation the country had already signed onto as an EU member.
The substance of what crypto firms must now hand over is extensive. Providers are required to register reportable users and disclose their names, addresses, dates and places of birth, tax identification numbers, and tax residency jurisdictions. On the transaction side, firms must report the categories of digital assets a customer has traded, transferred, or exchanged, the total value and number of units involved, and the count of transactions converting between crypto and fiat currency. Crucially, the reporting obligation extends to crypto-to-crypto transactions as well, closing a gap that some earlier national frameworks left open by focusing only on on-ramps and off-ramps to traditional currency.
That crypto-to-crypto detail matters more than it might first appear. A reporting regime that only captures fiat conversions leaves a wide berth for users to trade extensively within the crypto ecosystem, accumulating gains or restructuring holdings, without ever generating a reportable event until they finally cash out. By pulling crypto-to-crypto activity into scope, Bulgaria's implementation closes that loophole entirely, giving tax authorities visibility into the full transaction history rather than just the entry and exit points. The move sits alongside other recent EU efforts to tighten the operational requirements placed on crypto exchanges, part of a broader pattern of the bloc closing gaps left by MiCA's initial rollout.
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Bulgaria is one of several European states working through DAC8 implementation on staggered timelines, and the specifics of how aggressively each country enforces the new reporting rules will likely vary. Germany, for instance, has already signaled its own approach to crypto taxation with a 25% capital gains rate set to begin in 2028, a different mechanism aimed at the same broad goal of bringing crypto holdings fully into national tax systems. The contrast with jurisdictions moving in the opposite direction is notable, too: a petition to delay South Korea's crypto tax by two years recently crossed the review threshold needed for parliamentary consideration, reflecting how unevenly global sentiment on crypto tax enforcement is still split even as the EU moves toward a harmonized, mandatory standard. For crypto users in Bulgaria, the practical effect is straightforward: the anonymity that on-chain activity once seemed to offer against domestic tax authorities has now been formally closed off, with the reporting infrastructure to back it up rather than just the legal requirement on paper.
Enforcement mechanics still need to be worked out in practice, including exactly how crypto providers headquartered outside Bulgaria but serving Bulgarian residents will be expected to comply, and what penalties apply to platforms that fail to register reportable users at all. Those details will likely surface over the coming months as the National Revenue Agency issues implementing guidance. What is already settled is the legal obligation itself, passed with a margin that leaves the industry little room to argue the requirement might still be watered down before it takes effect.
