Child tax relief

An annual benefit, not a monthly deduction

The child tax relief (данъчно облекчение за деца) is set out in article 22c of the Personal Income Tax Act (ЗДДФЛ). It reduces the annual tax base for a parent, and so returns part of the 10% tax paid over the year. The most important thing to understand about it — and the reason this calculator handles it the way it does — is that it is annual, not monthly. The values below are those in force for 2026.

The relief is claimed after the year ends, in one of two ways: through the employer’s year-end recalculation (article 49), or on the annual tax return (article 50). It requires a declaration and, where both parents are entitled, it is split between them. Crucially, article 42 — which governs the monthly advance tax withheld from each payslip — does not include it. So having children does not change your monthly net pay. Nothing extra is added to your account each month; instead the tax base for the whole year is reduced, and the saving is realised at year-end.

Why the calculator shows it separately

Because the relief never appears in the monthly advance, folding it into the monthly net figure would be simply wrong — it would show money arriving each month that, in reality, only comes back once a year (if at all, depending on the declaration). So the calculator keeps the monthly net pay untouched by the number of children, and surfaces the child relief as a separate, clearly labelled annual figure beneath it. The children control drives only that annual number, never the monthly result.

Roughly how much

The relief works by reducing the annual tax base by a fixed amount per number of children; the actual saving is 10% of that reduction. As a rough guide, the annual tax saving is 306,78 € for one child, 613,55 € for two children and 920,33 € for three or more. These amounts follow from the relief in force for 2026 and the flat tax rate.

One caveat worth flagging

Besides the annual route, the relief can also be taken monthly through the employer on a filed declaration (under article 42, introduced by State Gazette 52/2022). This calculator deliberately shows the relief as an annual figure only — a simplification that never under-reports your pay: the monthly take-home is computed without the relief, and its full effect is shown in the annual amount above.

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