White List Poland 2020
From January 1, 2020, there are numerous tax consequences associated with payment of liabilities to the non-white list account or for a transfer made without the split payment mechanism. Therefore, the use of the white list will become obligatory for most Polish entrepreneurs. Otherwise, entrepreneurs will be subject to severe sanctions both in terms of VAT and income tax.
The white list is the name of a new database, which has been maintained by the Head of the National Tax Administration since 1 September 2019. One of the basic objectives of the list is to facilitate and accelerate the search of data on entities, including those registered as VAT taxpayers. The list is updated once a day. In fact, it is a combination of previously functioning separate lists of VAT taxpayers, deleted and reinstated entities and those who were refused registration. The list does not include taxpayers awaiting registration as VAT taxpayers, as well as those who have never had to make such registration (e.g. in connection with benefiting from subjective VAT exemption). The white list also includes data for the last 5 years (with the status of a VAT taxpayer presented according to the current state). In addition, the database contains a list of numbers of taxpayers' bank accounts or accounts registered with SKOK (cooperative savings and credit unions), opened in connection with the conducted business activity, provided that they were reported to the tax office in a notice of identification or update and confirmed by means of the IT System of the Clearing House (STIR). Private accounts, which are often used by individual entrepreneurs, are not included in the white list.
In the opinion of the Ministry of Finance, the main task of the list is that through free and quick access to current (also historical) data facilitating the identification of contractors, such as the date of registration, refusal of registration, deletion from the register and reinstatement of registration as a VAT taxpayer, honest entrepreneurs when selecting contractors should reduce the risk of being entangled in the VAT fraudulent practice.
From 1 January 2020, the following sanctions will be imposed for paying an invoice from a contractor to an account that does not exist in the white list:
a) inability to recognise as a tax deductible costs,
b) joint and several liability for the supplier's VAT.
Sanctions will apply only if the one-off value of the transaction, regardless of the number of payments resulting from it, exceeds 15.000 PLN.
A taxpayer may release himself from these consequences if, within 3 days from the date of issuing a transfer order ("transfer order day"), he submits to the head of the tax office competent for the issuer of the invoice a notice of payment to an account not listed on the white list (Notification ZAW-NR).
Another way to avoid joint and several liability for the supplier's VAT arrears in the case of payment omitting an account listed in the white list is to pay the amount by using the split payment mechanism. It should be noted, however, that payment with the use of the split payment mechanism only exempts from joint and several liability for VAT, without affecting the possibility of including payments as tax deductible costs.
Tax sanctions do not apply to credit card payments or online transactions carried out by electronic intermediaries such as Blue Media or PayPal.
ATTENTION! The necessity to use the white list also occurs in case of cooperation with foreign contractors. Such an obligation will occur in the case of foreign entrepreneurs who are registered in Poland as active VAT taxpayers and carry out transactions subject to VAT in Poland, and thus are treated as a Polish VAT taxpayer, whose settlement account should be included in the database. Entrepreneurs using a foreign Tax Indentification Number (NIP) number who supply goods or services in the territory of another country are not obliged to open a Polish settlement account in order to include it in the List and apply it in settlements for sales made to a Polish buyer. If the foreign counterparty does not use the Polish NIP for the purposes of a given transaction, the regulations concerning payments to the billing accounts.
