Rules Eased in Poland

Warsaw, 14. March – On January 1st, amendments to the Act on VAT and the secondary regulations became effective in Poland. The most important changes concern the rates of VAT. The basic VAT rate has been increased to 23 percent, while the reduced rates have been fixed at 5 and 8 percent, as well as 0 percent. These changed rates are established temporarily for the period from January 1st to December 31st 2013. There are special rules introduced into the Actz on VAT in order to allow taxpayers to apply the correct VAT rate for the supplies of goods and the provision of services encompassing the moment in which the rate is changed. Additionally, the threshold of turnover below which the entities are exempted from VAT has been increased from PLN 100,000 to PLN 150,000 and the list of items which are exempted from VAT has been transferred to the Act. Moreover, there has been a withdrawal from the statistical classifications (PKWiU) in order to define their scope according to the EU and domestic law as well as respective court rulings. Next issue is the loss of the right to the full deduction of VAT arising from the receipt of consent for implementing restrictions which were not applied before Poland’s accession to the EU. In the period from 2011 to 2012, when buying passenger cars and certain vehicles of a maximum admissible weight of 3.5 tonnes, taxpayers are entitled to deduct only 60 percent of VAT contained in the purchase price but no more than PLN 6,000. Taxpayers are not allowed to deduct input VAT disclosed on invoices for fuel for these vehicles. The Act still provides for the ability to deduct VAT on the purchase of cars with a maximum admissible weight of 3.5 tonnes and fuel for them if they satisfy the conditions specified in the Act, confirmed by an additional inspection conducted by the regional technical inspection station. The acquired right to deduct input VAT on installments under lease, rental or leasing contracts and others of a similar nature may be retained by taxpayers if they notify the tax authorities of the contract by 31 January 2011 and there are no changes to the contract after 31 December 2010. Another very important change which came into force on 1 January 2011 concerns electronic invoicing. It was introduced in order to implement Council Directive 2010/45/EU with respect to the rules on invoicing. The intention was to liberalize current standards for sending and storing electronic invoices to allow treating paper invoices and electronic invoices in the same way. The storage of invoices outside the country was permitted (regardless of the form of transmission) on condition that the tax authorities are provided with the electronic access to them on their request. Additionally, the possibility of issuing a single collective correcting invoice was introduced if the taxpayer provides discounts on all supplies of goods or services to a single customer in a given period. The list of changes is not exhaustive, thus we strongly recommend that you contact your Ecovis partner to discuss tax issues which are specific to your business in detail.