Bulgaria orders crypto exchanges to report user data to national tax agency

Bulgaria’s National Assembly approved legislation on Sept. 9 requiring crypto-asset service providers to report detailed customer and transaction data to the National Revenue Agency, aligning the country with the EU’s DAC8 framework for crypto tax information exchange.

The Bulgarian National Assembly approved the amendments to the Tax and Social Insurance Procedure Code on Sept. 9, with 149 lawmakers voting in favor, none opposing and 10 abstaining. The legislation was introduced by the Council of Ministers and passed its second and final reading.

The move brings Bulgaria’s crypto tax framework closer to the European Union’s expanding system for automatic exchange of information on crypto assets, giving tax authorities greater visibility into digital-asset activity and cross-border transactions.

Bulgaria crypto regulation puts exchanges under new reporting duties

Under the new rules, crypto-asset service providers operating under Bulgaria’s reporting framework will have to register and provide information about reportable users to the country’s tax authority.

The information goes well beyond a user’s name. Providers must collect identifying details such as a customer’s address, date and place of birth, tax identification number and jurisdiction of tax residence. They must also report information about the crypto assets involved in transactions, transfers and exchanges.

Transaction reporting will cover activity involving purchases and sales of crypto assets, including transactions against fiat currencies. Crypto-to-crypto exchanges and transfers are also within the broader reporting framework.

That makes the new Bulgaria crypto regulation particularly significant for centralized exchanges and other service providers that maintain customer accounts and transaction records.

The framework does not mean that tax authorities will receive a real-time feed of every blockchain transaction. Instead, reporting crypto-asset service providers collect information from customers and submit reportable data to national tax authorities, which can then exchange relevant information with the taxpayer’s jurisdiction of residence.

The European Commission says DAC8 requires reporting crypto-asset service providers to begin collecting information on reportable transactions from Jan. 1, 2026. Information covering the 2026 reporting year is scheduled to be exchanged between tax authorities by Sept. 30, 2027.

Bulgaria’s parliamentary approval came after the EU’s Dec. 31, 2025 deadline for national transposition, but the law nevertheless brings the country’s domestic framework into the wider DAC8 system.

DAC8 expands the tax authority’s view of crypto activity

The Bulgarian changes are part of a much larger European push to close information gaps surrounding crypto taxation.

DAC8, the eighth amendment to the EU’s Directive on Administrative Cooperation, was specifically designed to extend automatic tax-information exchange to crypto assets. The European Commission says the framework aims to combat tax fraud, tax evasion and tax avoidance by improving the information available to national tax administrations.

The scope is broader than traditional crypto-to-fiat trading. The EU framework covers a wide range of reportable crypto transactions and includes certain stablecoins, e-money tokens and some non-fungible tokens within its definition of covered crypto assets.

For customers, the practical consequence is that activity conducted through a reporting exchange may become visible to tax authorities even when the customer lives in another EU country.

That cross-border element is central to Bulgaria crypto regulation.

For example, a Bulgarian-based provider could collect information on a customer who is tax resident elsewhere in the European Union. The relevant data can then move through the established tax-information exchange system to the jurisdiction where that customer is resident.

The framework can also capture transfers involving external addresses when they are processed by a reporting provider. However, DAC8 does not require providers to continuously report transactions carried out entirely between self-custody wallets with no reporting intermediary.

The distinction is important because blockchain transparency and taxpayer identification are not the same thing.

Global crypto tax reporting is moving beyond Europe

Bulgaria’s move also fits into a global shift toward standardized crypto tax reporting.

The OECD’s Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework, or CARF, establishes a separate international system for collecting and automatically exchanging tax information relating to crypto transactions. The OECD says 76 jurisdictions are now formally committed to implementing CARF, with most expected to begin automatic exchanges involving crypto-asset transactions from 2027.

When the OECD first announced coordinated international action on crypto reporting, Secretary-General Mathias Cormann described the initiative as an important step toward combating tax evasion through greater transparency and information exchange.

The distinction between DAC8 and CARF is important. DAC8 is the EU’s regional framework, while CARF is designed to facilitate similar information exchanges among participating jurisdictions globally.

The scale of potentially taxable crypto activity helps explain why governments are expanding these systems. Chainalysis estimated that on-chain crypto activity with potential tax relevance exceeded $457 billion globally in 2025. The firm cautioned that its figure is conservative because it does not capture all activity conducted through centralized exchanges and other venues.

That creates a major challenge for tax authorities: centralized platforms can provide verified customer information, while decentralized and peer-to-peer activity can be much harder to connect to a specific taxpayer.

What Bulgaria’s new rules mean for crypto users

For crypto users, the practical message from Bulgaria crypto regulation is straightforward: transactions conducted through regulated or reportable service providers are becoming increasingly difficult to separate from traditional tax-reporting systems.

Exchanges and other reporting providers will have to build processes capable of identifying customers, verifying tax residency and aggregating relevant transaction information before submitting it to authorities.

The change also reinforces a broader trend across the crypto industry. Regulatory scrutiny is moving beyond licensing and anti-money-laundering controls toward systematic tax transparency.

Bulgaria’s parliamentary vote therefore represents more than a domestic tax amendment. It places the country’s crypto sector firmly within Europe’s emerging information-sharing infrastructure and gives tax authorities a clearer mechanism for identifying cross-border digital-asset activity.

As DAC8 reporting progresses and CARF expands internationally, Bulgaria crypto regulation is likely to become part of a much broader global shift in which crypto exchanges increasingly serve as information gateways between digital-asset users and tax authorities.