4 ms·

Well thats a bit unfair. English is very popular among the young people in bulgaria, since it was a required subject in most schools, starting from the 90s, so

by seer 8y ago

Well thats a bit unfair. English is very popular among the young people in bulgaria, since it was a required subject in most schools, starting from the 90s, so everyone below age 30-40 knows at least some english, most understand it quite well. As for taxes - they are one of the lowest in europe, specifically regarding softweare companies. Which is the main reason that it currently has so many local and foreign IT companies operating here. And I think that is why there are so many it people as well, because of the prevalence of employers (and the bidding war for talent which inadvertently raises salaries) But I agree that knowing Cyrillic is a plus, though I’ve known quite a few people that have lived happily in Bulgaria for 5+ years with english as their only means of communication.

petre 8y ago
Cyrillic is not that hard. I learned basic reading Cyrillic from traffic signs while transiting Bulgaria, Serbia and Macedonia, over the course of two days.
baybal2 8y ago
>As for taxes - they are one of the lowest in europe, specifically regarding softweare companies. I researched Bulgarian market when we were looking for a place to open an EU branch. Nominal taxes are low, but a dazzling assortment of different welfare charges effectively amounted to extra tax. That's not much different how it's typically done in other ex-bloc countries. Before that, during my years freelancing, ePAM systems tried to bring me there on a very competitive package, comparable to what I had in Canada. When the talk came to taxes, I just got that "don't worry, we have good tax consultants," and then when I persisted on getting to know how it all is gonna work, I was told of a dizzyingly complex scheme where they were to setup 2 companies on my behalf and "lease intellectual property" from one, while I would've been getting near zero interest loan from another, owning a stake in it. After hearing that, I firmly changed my mind. My advice to Eastern European taxmen would be to stop disguising tax as welfare charges. Plainly admit that the net tax rate closes on to 40%, and work from there.
- krn 8y ago
  > I researched Bulgarian market when we were looking for a place to open an EU branch. Which EU country did you end up choosing, if you don't mind me asking? Or, at least, what were the top three / five?
  - baybal2 8y ago
    Germany, as one of our C-levels was German. Despite of all taxes, bureaucracy, scarce microelectronics talent. All that wasn't as important as the ease of initial setup. For top five, those were your expected Eastern European countries strong in programming: Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, Bulgaria. In the end, purely going there for tax advantage didn't worth the effort. We calculated that net difference for an office of 5~7 people was no more than 17% as long as we repatriated the revenue. All our senior staff has contracts with fixed net income exactly because we expected that they will be moving around a lot. Were they to receive their net salary in Bulgaria as regular salaried employees, their net tax would be approaching 50%. There, we would be clearly not gaining much over Germany, even if we were to include corporate tax into calculation.

by seer 8y ago

petre 8y ago

Cyrillic is not that hard. I learned basic reading Cyrillic from traffic signs while transiting Bulgaria, Serbia and Macedonia, over the course of two days.

baybal2 8y ago

>As for taxes - they are one of the lowest in europe, specifically regarding softweare companies. I researched Bulgarian market when we were looking for a place to open an EU branch. Nominal taxes are low, but a dazzling assortment of different welfare charges effectively amounted to extra tax. That's not much different how it's typically done in other ex-bloc countries. Before that, during my years freelancing, ePAM systems tried to bring me there on a very competitive package, comparable to what I had in Canada. When the talk came to taxes, I just got that "don't worry, we have good tax consultants," and then when I persisted on getting to know how it all is gonna work, I was told of a dizzyingly complex scheme where they were to setup 2 companies on my behalf and "lease intellectual property" from one, while I would've been getting near zero interest loan from another, owning a stake in it. After hearing that, I firmly changed my mind. My advice to Eastern European taxmen would be to stop disguising tax as welfare charges. Plainly admit that the net tax rate closes on to 40%, and work from there.

krn 8y ago
> I researched Bulgarian market when we were looking for a place to open an EU branch. Which EU country did you end up choosing, if you don't mind me asking? Or, at least, what were the top three / five?
- baybal2 8y ago
  Germany, as one of our C-levels was German. Despite of all taxes, bureaucracy, scarce microelectronics talent. All that wasn't as important as the ease of initial setup. For top five, those were your expected Eastern European countries strong in programming: Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, Bulgaria. In the end, purely going there for tax advantage didn't worth the effort. We calculated that net difference for an office of 5~7 people was no more than 17% as long as we repatriated the revenue. All our senior staff has contracts with fixed net income exactly because we expected that they will be moving around a lot. Were they to receive their net salary in Bulgaria as regular salaried employees, their net tax would be approaching 50%. There, we would be clearly not gaining much over Germany, even if we were to include corporate tax into calculation.