On 25 January 2016 to the Chancellery of the Prime Minister of the Council of Ministers was transferred the draft law on retail tax. The bill is to be passed according to section 99 Rules of Procedure of the Council of Ministers in a separate procedure.
After first getting to know its content, the project surprises with a very large level of generality – the whole counts only 14 articles falling within 5 pages.
Despite the formal transmission by the Ministry of the bill to government works, it has not been officially published until now. Presumably the correct text of the submitted project was published on its pages by the Journal of Poland, which claims that as first reached the original text.
After first getting to know its content, the project surprises with a very large level of generality – the whole counts only 14 articles falling within 5 pages.
When determining the taxable persons of the new tax return, the authors indicated that they would be traders and retailers, with the recognition of whether a given entity is a commercial network depending on whether it operates in a group where cooperation is based on franchise agreements, while the retailer is every seller.
Such wording of the statutory provision means that the tax will apply to any seller who meets the criterion in question, i.e. to realize the monthly income from retail sales above 1,500,000 PLN. The amount of monthly taxable income is to be determined on the basis of the volume of turnover recorded by the fiscal cash register.
The bill provides for two tax rates:
- • „standard’ in height 0.7%, to apply from Monday to Friday (1.3%, if the income exceeds the amount 300,000,000 PLN) and
- • „weekend’, 1.9%, to be used for sale made on Saturdays and Sundays.
Compared to other jurisdictions in which such a type of tax was introduced, these rates are quite high. In addition to the rates, the lack of a subjective distinction between domestic and foreign entrepreneurs also raises serious concerns.
In practice, therefore, any retailer in Poland will be the taxable person for a new tax, on sales volumes above the indicated threshold (1,500,000 PLN). In the presented project there are no provisions to exclude Polish companies from the scope of taxation. Meanwhile, it was mentioned in Ethiopian.
The project has only been submitted to government work, and it is therefore difficult to predict for the moment how consistent it will be with the final content and when the date of entry into force of the new regulation should be expected.
We will keep you informed of any further work on this project.