This year's report by the Economic Forum and the Warsaw School of Economics, in the chapter "The response of Polish tax policy to the pandemic crisis against the background of the Visegrad Group countries" draws attention to the efforts of the authorities towards the COVID pandemic and seeks answers to the question whether the support instruments of companies were sufficient in this respect. According to the report, they were far disproportionate to the needs and did not eliminate the risks to the liquidity of companies or their survival on the market.
Report included 11 thematic scopes including: economy, labour market, active ageing, health market, regional policy, taxes, banking sector, energy, ecology, value chains, start-ups. One of the more interesting topics was the summary of anti-crisis actions in tax law.
Much of the noise that the government is making around the tools introduced, already in the planning stage, introduces uncertainty in the already uncertain business environment
55 support tools – most meaningless to entrepreneurs
Against the background of the Visegrad Group countries, Poland did not perform well in the ranking of fiscal and tax instruments to counter the effects of the pandemic. Z 55 We took the final places in the area, which was affected by the fact that most of the tools were neutral against the tax rate, tax base or budget revenue, as stated in the presentation of the Dr hab report. Dominik Gajewski, SGH.
The report includes anti-crisis actions in two groups: the first included ad hoc actions, directly addressing the effects of pandemics (co-financing, relief), the second included strict fiscal measures (public services).
“What was the first reaction of the authorities to the pandemic?” we read in the introduction to the report. – The deadline for the implementation of the obligations of taxpayers has been extended and the implementation of the regulations has been delayed. But changes in deadlines were often not enough, and in subsequent stages it was decided to give taxpayers even more time. This indicated uncertainty about the forthcoming tax changes and late disclosure of planned changes and short vacatio legis. In addition to the rules on tax procedures, such as freezing tax settlements, there are no signs in the legislation of using instruments to support taxpayers, mainly entrepreneurs, in the fight against the negative effects of pandemics."
Deepening the Chaos
A lot of the noise that the government is making around the tools introduced, already in the planning stage, introduces uncertainty into an already uncertain business environment.
It is therefore very appropriate to note in the report: “It seems that, given the sensitivity of this issue (the tax-related tools to counter the effects of the pandemic), reasonable action by the authorities should be limited to a rather careful approach or non-discourse of taxation in general.
In this way, the Czech, Slovak and Hungarian authorities behaved and the Polish authorities were completely different.”