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About 600 British property owners have not paid their estate taxes in the Bulgarian resort town of Pamporovo for the past two years, Bulgarian news agency BTA said on July 1 2010.

According to Chepelare deputy mayor Georgi Pepelanov, the municipality has sent nearly 600 letters to debtors, addressed to the UK, in which the owners concerned are "kindly requested" to pay their taxes.

The municipality's mailings cost 600 leva, as each letter costs about one lev, the report said.

Perhaps to defuse tension, Pepelanov said that the municipality is certain that this was not a deliberate evasion but merely a misunderstanding between the British owners and the companies managing their properties in Bulgaria.

However, the municipality is also owed a large sum from local hotels in the resort of Pamporovo.

According to the BTA, the sum owed by the British and the hotels amounts to 600 000 leva in total.

"Russians and Spanish nationals also have property here but they have paid taxes on time," Pepelanov said.

So far, the municipality has only received about a third of the money owed to it by hotels in Pamporovo.