Remote work rules in Bulgaria: what employers agree, pay and track

Remote work in Bulgaria is governed by its own section of the Labour Code (Кодекс на труда), Section VIIIb, which deals with работа от разстояние, literally “work from a distance”. It sits inside ordinary employment law, so a person working from a flat in Plovdiv has the same contract, the same leave and the same social security as a colleague who commutes to a Sofia office. Nothing about the arrangement turns them into a freelancer.

Three ideas run through the section. First, remote work is voluntary: it is agreed between employer and employee, and the terms go into the employment contract or a written annex to it. Second, the contract names the place of work. Amendments in 2024 opened the door to naming several locations, handy for people who split the week between home and a coworking desk or a family house in another town. Third, the employer keeps its duties as employer, including health and safety, even though it has no control over the room the work happens in.

If you are hiring from abroad, this keeps things simple. There is no separate “remote contract” to learn. You start from a standard Bulgarian labour contract and add the remote terms the Code expects. Counsel who want the exact wording can read the consolidated Code on the Ministry of Justice site, justice.government.bg, and for the clauses that every Bulgarian contract carries regardless of where the work happens, see what goes into a labour contract in Bulgaria.

The employer pays. Article 107i(3) of the Labour Code puts the cost of the tools of the job on the employer: the equipment, consumables, software, maintenance, communications including the internet connection, and the measures needed to protect data. The employee provides the physical workspace, usually a room at home, but the things that make the work possible are the employer’s bill.

This is where remote set-ups most often go wrong when a company copies a policy written for another country. A clause saying “employees use their own laptop and home broadband” does not shift the cost in Bulgaria. If a developer in Varna uses a personal machine because nobody shipped one, the employer still carries the obligation, and a later dispute over unpaid costs starts from that point.

The Code says who pays; it leaves the mechanics to the parties. In practice employers do one of two things, sometimes both:

• Supply the hardware directly, with a short handover record listing serial numbers, so it can be collected at the end of the job.
• Reimburse agreed running costs, such as a share of the internet bill or a headset, against receipts or a fixed amount written into the contract or an internal rule.
• Pay for software seats centrally, so subscriptions stay in the employer’s name and access can be switched off on the last day.

Tax treatment of these payments is a separate question from who owes them. Equipment that the employer buys and owns is simply a business cost; cash paid to the employee is looked at differently, so check with payroll before agreeing a flat monthly sum. Keeping the employer as owner of the hardware is usually the cleaner option, and it makes the end of employment easier, because the return of a laptop is then a matter of collecting company property.

Whichever route you choose, write it down before the first working day. A clear list avoids the awkward conversation three months in about who pays for a broken monitor.

The employer stays responsible for health and safety at work, including for people who never visit an office. The Code does not expect you to inspect a kitchen table, but it does expect the usual employer steps: a risk assessment that covers the remote role, instructions on safe use of screens and equipment, and access to an occupational health service (служба по трудова медицина), which Bulgarian employers contract for their staff.

The 2024 amendments added a transparency rule that matters to software and support teams. Where work is assigned, monitored or assessed through an information system or an algorithm, the employee must be told in writing how that works. Ticket-routing tools, automated time tracking and productivity dashboards all fall into this. A one-page note explaining what the system records, what it is used for and who sees the output is the sensible minimum.

Data protection is part of the same picture. Because the employer pays for the measures that keep data safe, it also decides what they are: managed devices, a VPN, disk encryption, rules on printing at home. Put those rules in writing and give them to the employee at the start, together with the equipment.

Home-based staff keep the standard schedule: five days, eight-hour days as the norm, forty hours as the weekly ceiling for normal time. Extra hours count against a yearly overtime allowance of 150 (a collective agreement can raise it to 300), and they attract premiums of at least half again on a weekday, three quarters on a rest day and double pay on a public holiday. Working from home changes none of this, though it does make hours harder to see, which is why many employers agree a fixed core window when the person must be reachable.

Since 2024 Bulgarian employees also have a right to disconnect. Article 154b lets them ignore the employer’s calls, chats and emails while they are on their daily or weekly rest; only the contract or a collective agreement can carve out exceptions. For a team spread across time zones this is the clause to think about early. If you need a Sofia engineer to join a call at 19:00 local time once a week, say so in the contract and treat the time as working time; do not rely on goodwill.

A contract can also put a role on irregular working hours (ненормиран работен ден), letting the day run long when a release or an incident calls for it. The trade-off is leave: such staff get a minimum of 5 extra days on top of the usual 20, so plan for 25.

Under Article 167b, a mother or father of a child below the age of 12 may put a written request for home working, or for different hours, to the employer. The request is a formal step and deserves a formal, written answer within a reasonable time, with reasons if you say no. Many employers find it easier to agree a trial period than to refuse outright.

Moving someone who already works in an office to remote work is a change to the contract, so it is done by written agreement and recorded in an annex. The annex names the new place or places of work, the equipment and cost rules, the hours of availability and any reporting the employee must do. It also counts as a change to the employment data the employer reports to the National Revenue Agency (NRA, НАП), which must be updated within 3 days of the change.

A hybrid pattern, say three days at home and two in a shared office, is handled the same way. Both places go into the contract, and the cost rules apply to the days at home. If the office is a coworking space you rent for the team, record who books and pays for the desk, because the employee should not end up funding a workplace the employer asked them to use.

Going the other way, from remote back to an office, is again a contract change and needs the same care. If you think you may want people on site later, say in the original terms which office applies and on what notice, rather than inventing a rule when the need arises.

A request to work from another country is a different question from remote work inside Bulgaria, and it should be treated as one. The Labour Code’s remote work section assumes the employee works under Bulgarian rules; it does not settle which country’s tax, social security and employment law apply when someone spends weeks or months elsewhere. That depends on where the work is physically done, for how long, and the person’s own circumstances, so each request needs its own review before anyone books a flight.

The opposite case comes up too: a foreign national who will live in Bulgaria and work remotely for your team. Someone working physically in Bulgaria pays the flat 10% income tax on that Bulgarian-source pay whether or not they are tax resident. A person from outside the EU will normally need a residence and work permit first, such as the EU Blue Card or a single permit. Build that step into the start date rather than treating it as paperwork for later.

Our advice is to keep the contract’s place of work honest. If the person will spend most of the year in Bulgaria, say so; if a longer stay abroad is on the table, raise it before signing, not after.

Under Employer of Record Bulgaria, your new team member is employed by us on a Bulgarian labour contract with the remote terms built in, while the tasks, priorities and reviews stay with your managers. We enter the contract with the NRA within the 3-day window after signing, and before day one at the latest; after that we run euro payroll and pay over contributions and withheld tax each month, with the 25th as the deadline for the month just worked. The wider picture of what the employer of record takes on is in what an EOR covers for a Bulgarian hire.

Before the contract goes out we agree with you the points this article has raised:

• The place or places of work, and whether occasional work from another town is fine.
• Who ships the laptop, which costs are reimbursed and how.
• Core hours, any agreed contact outside them, and whether the role has irregular working hours.
• The systems that assign or track work, so the employee gets the written explanation the Code requires.
• What happens if the person later asks to work from abroad.

If you want to see the sequence from offer to first payslip, our timeline from signed offer to payday walks through it, and the services page lists what is included from €599 per employee per month.