Amendment of provisions Tax Ordinance, which entered into force 1 January 2019 and introduced an obligation to report on tax schemes has generated a lot of discussion among legal professionals. To define the tax scheme and the mechanisms associated with it, the legislator needed eighteen editorial units already In the first a paragraph of the new regulations.
In the ‘vocal’ appear characters such as promoter, supporter and user. We will also find out what “intangible assets” are, “other specific hallmarks” or “implementation”. The following paragraphs introduce tax schemes and rules for defining them to the reader in meanders.
However, the jokes for those engaged in professional tax consulting end after reading that within the time limit 30 days after the scheme was made available (preparing the implementation/execution scheme first The Head of the National Tax Administration should be informed of this fact. From this point on, a serious problem begins for legal professionals: lawyers, tax advisers and legal advisers. Until now, their rule has been that:
- - everything they learn when providing legal assistance must be kept secret (a lawyer, a lawyer),
- - they are obliged to keep secret the facts and information they have learned in connection with the pursuit of the profession (tax advisor).
Mysterious professional lawyers and amendments Tax Ordinance
For legal professionals, professional secrecy was the most important guarantee that what the client reveals in the law firm would remain only between the client and the lawyer. Legislator when constructing regulations Tax Ordinance decided to impose on the lawyers the obligation to inform about the legal aid granted to the client when there are grounds for qualifying such legal aid as a tax scheme.
The legislator left no room for doubt or Interpretative relaxation. In the rules governing the pursuit of legal professions, he explicitly excluded information from the scope of professional secrecy from the provisions on information about tax schemes a similar regulation concerns information made available under the anti-money laundering and terrorist financing Act).
For lawyers for whom the principle of professional secrecy was one of the most important principles of the profession, these provisions give rise to significant doubts and dilemmas of axiological nature.
You can imagine that against one customer will be required to ‘report’ to state institutions in the field of legal aid granted to him in the field of taxation. On the other hand, the lawyer will be obliged to keep confidential any information relating to that client in his criminal matters.
It should be recalled that a lawyer is obliged to pronounce his power of attorney when it appears from the circumstances that the client has lost his trust in him. Lawyers who deal with tax law will face such dilemmas in the future. Unfortunately, at such moments one can only quote the classic: "Sorry, this is the climate."
Author:
Andrzej Dmowski
Lawyer and Doctor of Legal Sciences of the University of Warsaw. From 2011 one from Corporate Management Partners Russell Bedford Poland. Previously on the BDO advisory network, as well as Deloitte & Touche. Author of the book “Transfer Prices”, co-author of the commentary “The Corporate Income Tax Act”, author of many publications on tax law.
Source: Forbes