IC&Partners Poland S.A. - Newsletter November 2021
Change in parental
leave
The Polish government,
following the adoption of Directive 2019/1158 of the European Parliament and of
the Council (EU), the so-called work life balance directive, should implement
legislation by August 2022 that will guarantee each parent a minimum of 2
months of leave parental (4 months in total). According to the legislation, the
father will be obliged to take paternity leave in kind without the possibility
of transferring it to the mother. The Ministry of Family and Social Policies
will most likely give the regulations a sufficiently long vacatio legis, so
that they come into force from the beginning of 2023.
The legislator has to
adapt the existing rules on parental leave. It can reserve two months for each
parent from the fixed and currently applicable amount of leave (this would
result in the reduction of women's leave to 10 months). Another option is to
extend the benefit for another two months. This would, of course, have the
effect of increasing the cost of services paid. Another problem that employers
will face is the need to manage the absenteeism of working fathers, which the
new regulations will cause.
New obligations for
entrepreneurs linked to the National System of electronic invoices
Experts predict that
the obligation to issue structured invoices may bring more obligations to
entrepreneurs than potential benefits. Currently, when issuing regular
invoices, the entrepreneur has to provide about 20 mandatory information. In
theory, the same rules will apply to electronic invoices, but in practice up to
300 items will have to be indicated. The issuing of invoices will therefore
become very time-consuming. The scope of the data required by the Ministry of
Finance will exceed that which is contained in the EU VAT Directive. However,
Poland intends to ask for the possibility to request more information. The
structured invoice should contain information such as the EORI number, e-mail
addresses, telephone numbers, the number of the WZ document (goods issue note),
the type of transport used in case of supply of goods, the identification data
of the carrier, the date and time of commencement of the transport, the address
of the place of dispatch, the global trade unit number, the PKWiU symbol
(Classification of Goods and Services), the symbol of the combined nomenclature
or the type of effect of the correction in recordings. Until now, a lot of such
data had to be reported only in JPK_V7 reporting. Thus, it may be necessary -
de facto - to provide different types of information twice, first on the
invoice, then within the JPK file.
Tax amnesty
One of the changes
that the Polski Ład law will introduce is a tax amnesty for people who
voluntarily report their hidden income to the tax authorities. Until now, when
the taxman took over such income, the taxpayer paid a tax of 75%. The new law
will make it possible to report income from undeclared sources for the past
five years. It will not be possible to report VAT irregularities or tax crimes.
Applications in these cases can be submitted from October 1st, 2022
to March 31st, 2023. A special 8% tax will be applied to this
reported income. To this must be added a fee for the related application to the
tax office, which must amount to 1% of the declared income, not less than 1,000
PLN and not more than 30,000 PLN. If a taxpayer is not sure that he has
violated the tax law and can re-enter the amnesty, he must await the opinion of
the Council for the specially appointed repatriation of capital. The opinions
will cost 50 thousand PLN each.
Delays in
commercial transactions after January 1st, 2022
The transitional
period for the application of the increased limit of admissible delays in
commercial transactions on the basis of the law of 8 March 2013 on the fight
against excessive delays in commercial transactions ends on 1st
January 2022 (Official Gazette of 2021, art. 424 ; hereinafter: the
"law"). The aforementioned prohibition applies to subjects that are
not public entities, which are late with payments in a situation where the sum
of the value of unpaid pecuniary obligations paid after maturity by a given
taxpayer in the 3 consecutive months amounts to at least 2 million PLN. In the
first two years of the legislation in force (2020-2021), however, the limit was
raised to PLN 5 million. The UOKiK President may impose an administrative
sanction on companies that commit the indicated delays. The Office easily
identifies these companies thanks to the introduction of the obligation to
prepare reports on the payment terms applied. The subjects obliged to deposit
them are now not only tax capital groups and taxpayers with revenues exceeding
€ 50 million in the previous fiscal year, but also, for the first time, real
estate companies. In the case of CIT taxpayers who already carry out the activity,
the obligation applies to those in which:
the
value of real estate assets on the last day of the year preceding the current
fiscal year constitutes at least 50 per cent of all assets;
the
value of these assets exceeds PLN 10 million;
in
the previous fiscal year, at least 60 per cent of the revenues were obtained
from leases, subleases, leases, rentals, subleases and other contracts of a
similar nature concerning real estate or from contracts for the transfer of
ownership, the object of which is an asset immovable property or immovable
property rights referred to in Section 3 (3) (4) of the CIT Law and by way of
participation in other real estate companies.
Change in parental leave
The Polish government, following the adoption of Directive 2019/1158 of the European Parliament and of the Council (EU), the so-called work life balance directive, should implement legislation by August 2022 that will guarantee each parent a minimum of 2 months of leave parental (4 months in total). According to the legislation, the father will be obliged to take paternity leave in kind without the possibility of transferring it to the mother. The Ministry of Family and Social Policies will most likely give the regulations a sufficiently long vacatio legis, so that they come into force from the beginning of 2023.
The legislator has to adapt the existing rules on parental leave. It can reserve two months for each parent from the fixed and currently applicable amount of leave (this would result in the reduction of women's leave to 10 months). Another option is to extend the benefit for another two months. This would, of course, have the effect of increasing the cost of services paid. Another problem that employers will face is the need to manage the absenteeism of working fathers, which the new regulations will cause.
New obligations for entrepreneurs linked to the National System of electronic invoices
Experts predict that the obligation to issue structured invoices may bring more obligations to entrepreneurs than potential benefits. Currently, when issuing regular invoices, the entrepreneur has to provide about 20 mandatory information. In theory, the same rules will apply to electronic invoices, but in practice up to 300 items will have to be indicated. The issuing of invoices will therefore become very time-consuming. The scope of the data required by the Ministry of Finance will exceed that which is contained in the EU VAT Directive. However, Poland intends to ask for the possibility to request more information. The structured invoice should contain information such as the EORI number, e-mail addresses, telephone numbers, the number of the WZ document (goods issue note), the type of transport used in case of supply of goods, the identification data of the carrier, the date and time of commencement of the transport, the address of the place of dispatch, the global trade unit number, the PKWiU symbol (Classification of Goods and Services), the symbol of the combined nomenclature or the type of effect of the correction in recordings. Until now, a lot of such data had to be reported only in JPK_V7 reporting. Thus, it may be necessary - de facto - to provide different types of information twice, first on the invoice, then within the JPK file.
Tax amnesty
One of the changes that the Polski Ład law will introduce is a tax amnesty for people who voluntarily report their hidden income to the tax authorities. Until now, when the taxman took over such income, the taxpayer paid a tax of 75%. The new law will make it possible to report income from undeclared sources for the past five years. It will not be possible to report VAT irregularities or tax crimes. Applications in these cases can be submitted from October 1st, 2022 to March 31st, 2023. A special 8% tax will be applied to this reported income. To this must be added a fee for the related application to the tax office, which must amount to 1% of the declared income, not less than 1,000 PLN and not more than 30,000 PLN. If a taxpayer is not sure that he has violated the tax law and can re-enter the amnesty, he must await the opinion of the Council for the specially appointed repatriation of capital. The opinions will cost 50 thousand PLN each.
Delays in commercial transactions after January 1st, 2022
The transitional period for the application of the increased limit of admissible delays in commercial transactions on the basis of the law of 8 March 2013 on the fight against excessive delays in commercial transactions ends on 1st January 2022 (Official Gazette of 2021, art. 424 ; hereinafter: the "law"). The aforementioned prohibition applies to subjects that are not public entities, which are late with payments in a situation where the sum of the value of unpaid pecuniary obligations paid after maturity by a given taxpayer in the 3 consecutive months amounts to at least 2 million PLN. In the first two years of the legislation in force (2020-2021), however, the limit was raised to PLN 5 million. The UOKiK President may impose an administrative sanction on companies that commit the indicated delays. The Office easily identifies these companies thanks to the introduction of the obligation to prepare reports on the payment terms applied. The subjects obliged to deposit them are now not only tax capital groups and taxpayers with revenues exceeding € 50 million in the previous fiscal year, but also, for the first time, real estate companies. In the case of CIT taxpayers who already carry out the activity, the obligation applies to those in which:
the value of real estate assets on the last day of the year preceding the current fiscal year constitutes at least 50 per cent of all assets;
the value of these assets exceeds PLN 10 million;
in the previous fiscal year, at least 60 per cent of the revenues were obtained from leases, subleases, leases, rentals, subleases and other contracts of a similar nature concerning real estate or from contracts for the transfer of ownership, the object of which is an asset immovable property or immovable property rights referred to in Section 3 (3) (4) of the CIT Law and by way of participation in other real estate companies.