Newsletter RSM Poland - page 2

We would like to present the amended Polish VAT regulations that entered into force on 1 January 2021 and may have a material effect on how you account for VAT. We encourage you to take a closer look at it and contact your RSM Poland consultant immediately should you have any questions.

The Industry Shield, also known as Shield 6.0, has finally been signed. The vast majority of the provisions of the Act of 9 December 2020 amending the Act on special solutions related to preventing, counteracting and combating COVID-19, other infectious diseases and crisis situations caused by them, and certain other acts (Journal of Laws, item 2255) entered into force on Wednesday, December 16, 2020. However, many regulations on important forms of support will not come into force until the end of December.

The European Commission has approved the Polish request to increase the threshold of state aid granted by tax authorities in the form of tax reliefs being either tax deferrals or tax instalments. This threshold will now be EUR 800,000.

Last week, the Sejm adopted a whole range of amendments of tax regulations. Apart from the fact that CIT will be levied from limited partnerships and the Estonian CIT will be introduced, taxpayers should also note the provision that is going to enter into force on 1 January 2021 and require companies to prepare the information about their tax strategy for the fiscal year and publish it to make it available to the public. However, this obligation will only apply to the largest taxpayers and tax capital groups.

The CJEU issued a very important ruling that the Polish regulations on bad debt relief are inconsistent with Directive 2006/112/EC.

The effects of the COVID-19 epidemic are noticeable in all economic sectors across the country. Since the beginning of the epidemic, the government has been working on solutions to help entrepreneurs save jobs.

On 3 June 2020 the German government agreed on a EUR 130 billion stimulus package to help revive the German economy hit by the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting recession. One of its postulates focuses on boosting consumer spending by lowering VAT rates: the standard rate is to be reduced from 19% to 16% and the reduced rate of 7% will be reduced to 5%. Lower tax rates will apply from 1 July until 31 December 2020. Now the package has to be approved by the German Bundesrat.

What an unexpected twist – the Polish Government proposes to postpone the deadline for the fulfilment of transfer pricing obligations. These changes are included in the next anti-crisis draft act on subsidizing interest rates on bank loans granted to ensure financial liquidity of businesses affected by COVID-19 and amendments to some related acts (hereinafter: Shield 4.0), published on 28 May on the website of the Government Legislation Centre. Pursuant to the proposed changes, taxpayers will be given three additional months to meet the reporting obligations concerning transfer pricing. Below we discuss the scope of these changes.

On Thursday, 28 May 2020, the Ministry of Finance announced that due to the current state of pandemic caused by SARS CoV-2 virus, the deadlines for submitting the new JPK_VAT for all taxpayers will be postponed from 1 July to 1 October 2020.

On 7 May 2020 the European Court of Justice issued a judgement in the case involving a Polish company Dong Yang Electronics sp. z o. o. (hereinafter: “Dong Yang”) and the Director of the Tax Administration Chamber in Wrocław (C‑547/18), in which it stated that a service provider cannot determine the existence of a fixed establishment in a member state of a company seated in a country outside the EU on the basis of a mere fact that the company has a subsidiary in this member state and that the service provider is not obliged to verify, for the purpose of such a determination, the contractual relationships between these entities.