Ministry of Finance directed 22 February b.r. for interministerial consultation, a draft law amending the Personal Income Tax Act and the Corporate Income Tax Act, according to which the selected taxpayers achieving an annual turnover of not more than the equivalent 1,200,000 EUR from 2017 pay reduced from 19% to 15% corporate income tax rate (hereinafter: CIT). The project also includes several changes in income taxes sealing the system of their collection by tax authorities.
However, according to the assumptions, the new tax rate will not apply to all CIT taxable persons, since the preferential rate will only benefit those entities which within the meaning of Act dated 15 February 1992 on corporate income tax (Journal of Laws of 2016, item 68, hereinafter: the CIT Act) has the status of a small taxpayer or taxable person starting an economic activity. However, it is extremely important to state that, with regard to taxable persons starting an economic activity, the 15% CIT rates will not be possible for those entities which have arisen as a result of the restructuring operations indicated in the draft Act (transformation, merger or division of specified exhaustively in the bill).
The draft law also includes provisions aimed at clarifying system solutions to eliminate interpretation doubts aimed at sealing the tax system. The Ministry of Finance therefore proposes:
- • clarification of cases where the income of a taxable person subject to a limited tax obligation is deemed to have been obtained in the territory of Poland,
- • clarification of the condition of application of the tax exemption at source, inter alia, of interest and royalties received by their recipient, which is at the same time their beneficial owner.
- • clarification of the rules on the cost-fixing of revenue in the event of disposal of shares of the acquiring company or of the newly bound company, referring to the concept of ‘disposal’ of rights incorporated by shares,
- clarification of the condition of legitimate economic reasons for the possibility of preferential taxation in the case of mergers and divisions of companies and extension of the scope of that condition to include transactions in the so-called exchange of shares,
- the definition of the principle of determining the income from the inclusion of shares in the taxpayer company CIT in exchange for a contribution in kind other than the undertaking or its organised part, at the value of that contribution as specified in the contract or similar document, not less than the market value,
The planned changes are derived from the exposition of Prime Minister Beata Szydło and are part of the strategy of the Ministry of Finance, on the one hand establishing better conditions for business growth in Poland, in particular among young people starting business, and with second sealing the tax system in our country.