The end of this year’s summer holidays signals not only a new school year, but also significant changes to the Tax Ordinance. The new provisions will come into force on 24 September and 1 October, respectively. Let us look at those that will genuinely affect taxpayers’ day-to-day operations.
The first change concerns new rules for making individual tax rulings on local taxes available to all interested parties. Until now, individual rulings have been available in Public Information Bulletin sites published by heads of communes, mayors and city presidents.
There has been no single system that made it possible to review the positions of local-government authorities on a particular local tax. Researching tax issues relating to property tax has sometimes been a real ordeal.
It was necessary to search the bulletins of individual municipalities one by one and, as at 1 January 2026, there were 2479 of them. Under the new model, individual rulings on local taxes will now be published in the EUREKA system, with the National Tax Information responsible for this.
This will make it possible to quickly find an issue of interest and to identify discrepancies in the interpretation of the rules more effectively. It is worth noting that not only new rulings will be published, but also those issued from 1 January 2025. This change should be assessed very positively.
Another change being introduced is the possibility of obtaining a refund of an overpayment through a simplified procedure limited to correcting the return and describing the reasons for the correction in the appropriate field (mandatory if the overpayment exceeds 10 000 PLN).
This is a very good change that will make things easier for taxpayers. The previous model required an application on the prescribed form. It had to be signed and submitted to the office together with attachments.
This involved obvious difficulties and unnecessary paperwork; the amounts that could be recovered sometimes exceeded the work needed simply to initiate the overpayment-refund procedure. These changes should also be assessed positively, especially since they resulted from appeals by entrepreneurs that were finally heard.
Another positive change will allow any attorney, not only a professional attorney, to notify a change, revocation or termination of a general power of attorney. This is an important change because until now a general attorney whose principal avoided the duty to update their data could not independently update the information in the Central Register of General Powers of Attorney.
A more controversial change concerns the ability of more entities than before to use the assistance of a general or special attorney. Under the incoming rules, an entity summoned by a tax authority will be able to submit explanations through an attorney.
This is a positive development: a general or special attorney can support a taxpayer required to provide explanations in a pending tax case. Unfortunately, the change still does not allow witnesses questioned by tax authorities to use an attorney’s assistance during that activity.
It is hard to understand the legislature’s continuing resistance to a change that is expected and necessary for many taxpayers, allowing them to appear before a tax authority without the additional stress of not knowing every complex provision of law and the consequences it may have.
Therefore, despite many positive changes, the current amendment to the Tax Ordinance leaves both taxpayers and their attorneys with a sense of disappointment and incomprehension.