Friday 13th

If you think that a finance, tax or accounting specialist couldn’t be superstitious, perhaps it’s time to think again. May 13th 2016 will go down in history of the Polish tax law as proof that unfortunately, the impossible, may, from time to time, become possible. On that day the Polish Sejm adopted the Act on Amendment of the Tax Ordinance. One may consider the main amendments, aimed at introducing the general anti abusive rule (GAAR) beneficial, except some legislative controversies, which put the regulations at risk of frequent disputes between tax payers and the Minister of Finance.

As if by coincidence, as if in passing, at the very end of the procedure, the legislators managed to sneak two seemingly unimportant provisions into the regulation.

According to the newly adopted amendment, the Tax Ordinance regulations have been completed by Article 82 para 1b stating: “legal persons, organisational units without legal personality, and natural persons who use computer programs to maintain their bookkeeping, are obliged, without request, to provide the Minister of Finance, by electronic means, with the ledger, on a monthly basis, by 25th day of the following month”. According to Article 6 of the Amendment Act, the new wording will enter into force as of the fiscal periods starting on 1July 2016 (small and mid-enterprises – for periods starting on 1January 2017).

That is to say, if in one of the last two fiscal years your company has been employing more than 250 staff or reached revenues exceeding EUR 50 mln and the assets value has exceeded EUR 43 mln, you’ll be obliged to provide a Standard Audit File – Tax, structure 4 (VAT ledger) to the tax office by 25 August.

The main issue here is not the obligation to prepare SAF-T; relevant provisions on such an obligation were published on 10 September 2015, so a taxpayer (mainly large companies) should be prepared to fulfil the additional obligation. It’s not the reduction of vacatio legis for small and mid-enterprises (initially those where obliged to prepare SAF-T by 30 June 2018). Indeed, it’s not even the fact that the files containing electronic VAT ledgers are currently completely useless for tax authorities, as there are no regulations on automatic cross-comparison of such data provided by taxpayers.

The problem is that the amendment, concerning SAF-T structure 4 – was introduced without the necessary legislative procedure (the initial draft, which was consulted, did not contain these provisions). What’s more, in my opinion, the regulations adopted on 13 May, implement a permanent surveillance of taxpayers, without any legal and factual grounds.