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This article is also available in German: Auswandern nach Bulgarien mit eigenem Einzelunternehmen - was du beachten solltest
A lot of readers are weighing up leaving Germany and starting a new chapter in Bulgaria — as private individuals, or with a small business in tow. A question that comes up constantly: what do I have to get right, legally and fiscally, if I move to Bulgaria as a sole trader? Here are the points that matter most.
One note before the detail: none of this is tax advice, and the answers genuinely depend on your own circumstances. The purpose here is to show you which questions to put to an adviser, not to replace one.
If you are moving your centre of life to Bulgaria permanently, you should deregister with the residents' registration office in Germany. That is not only a formality — it has tax consequences:
In other words: to start cleanly in Bulgaria, deregistration comes first.
Where you, or your company, end up being taxed depends on residence. The decisive criteria include:
If you have deregistered, moved and live in Bulgaria, but in practice still run the business from Germany, that can create a permanent establishment in Germany with all the tax consequences that follow. A clean separation matters.
A sole trader is a natural person carrying on a business without a separate legal personality — you are the business. It is a straightforward form, well suited to solo self-employed people and freelancers with manageable risk.
Its characteristics:
It suits smaller online businesses, consulting work and part-time activity.
As an EU citizen you can register a business in Bulgaria without difficulty — as a sole trader or as an OOD (broadly comparable to a German GmbH). Both are relatively uncomplicated and inexpensive. What each provider charges to do it for you, and what they disclose about their own fees, is set out in our provider comparison.
A practical rule of thumb:
If you move to Bulgaria as a sole trader, it is usually simplest to close the German business entirely and register a new one in Bulgaria.
Because sole traders rarely hold substantial business assets, this is also the least complicated route fiscally. You avoid the risk of an unintended permanent establishment in Germany and reduce the administrative load on both sides.
Take the German deregistration seriously, genuinely move the operational management to Bulgaria, and register locally — and there is very little standing in the way of a straightforward new start.
If you want to go deeper, our step-by-step book Start in Bulgaria covers how an OOD is founded, and the blog collects the practical accounts behind it.
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