tax | In Principle

The difficulties in international transport caused by the pandemic may have a major impact on VAT settlements of Polish exporters. These complications may carry over to the possibility of applying the 0% VAT rate, thus affecting taxpayers’ cash flows.

On 28 April 2020 a government bill including the proposed “Anti-Crisis Shield 3.0” was filed with the parliament. One of the proposals is to amend the Film Act to require providers of on-demand audiovisual media services to make quarterly payments to the Polish Film Institute equal to 1.5% of their revenue from fees for delivering content or for transmission of commercial messages, whichever figure is higher in a given payment period. The duty to pay the new “fees” would enter into force on 1 July 2020.

A system for supporting taxpayers struggling with the consequences of the coronavirus pandemic is being developed at the government level and will probably soon take effect. But taxpayers in difficulty may already draw on existing support instruments. One of them is reduction of income tax advances.

The draft Act on Resolution of Double Taxation Disputes and Conclusion of Advance Pricing Agreements would introduce a new tax institution, the Cooperation Programme, as part of its implementation of the conception of horizontal monitoring. The Cooperation Programme is intended to enter into force on 1 July 2020.

The Retail Sales Tax Act entered into force on 1 September 2016, but so far the state has not raised a single zloty from the tax. Since the European Commission filed an appeal on 24 July 2019 against the judgment of the General Court, the first collection of the tax has been further postponed.

The Ministry of Finance has published a draft of the long-awaited clarifications of the rules for collection of withholding tax and the obligations of tax remitters. The document is intended to resolve taxpayers’ doubts arising after amendment of income tax acts.

A tax amendment is lying on the Polish President’s desk. It will introduce, among other things, a tax on income from unrealised gains. As announced, the regulations should enter into force at the beginning of 2019.

At the end of August 2018, the Ministry of Finance announced future significant changes in the most important tax acts. These changes are to enter into force at the beginning of 2019. We wrote about some of these here last week. Now we present further changes proposed by the Ministry of Finance, as published in the draft act of 24 August 2018 amending the Personal Income Tax Act, the Corporate Income Tax Act, the Tax Ordinance and other acts, which might be particularly important for taxpayers conducting business activity.

The Polish government is currently working on a completely new tax regime applicable to income from trading in cryptocurrencies (virtual currencies) for personal income tax and corporate income tax purposes. For PIT purposes, this income is to be taxed as income from cash capital at the rate of 19% regardless of whether the turnover is of a private nature or made in the course of business activity. For CIT purposes, the income from trading in cryptocurrencies will be classified as capital gains. These new rules would apply from 1 January 2019.

Regulations introducing the split payment mechanism for VAT entered into force in Poland on 1 July 2018. This mechanism in B2B transactions is designed as a weapon in the fight against VAT fraud.

Businesses are not required to use the split payment mechanism. But the initiative left to them does force them to examine whether it would be worthwhile to take advantage of this new instrument. Lawmakers went to some effort to encourage taxpayers to say yes.

The split payment mechanism for business-to-business transactions entered into force on 1 July 2018. Introduction of this mechanism was motivated by the aim of closing gaps in the tax system. But split payment affects not only the situation of VAT payers, but also banks.