The Tax on Success
There is a certain irony in the structure of corporate income tax: the better you’re doing, the bigger your problems.
A company barely scraping by interests no one. A company that prospers—with high revenues, significant costs, complex operations—that company is in the crosshairs. Because that’s where the money is. And that’s where the opportunities for challenge lie.
CIT is not a tax you pay and forget. It is a tax you pay—and then spend five years waiting to see if someone will knock on the door and tell you that you paid it wrong.
Eight Thousand Ways to Make a Mistake
One legal database contains more than eight thousand tax interpretations concerning deductible costs under CIT. Eight thousand. For comparison: interpretations concerning revenue number around three thousand.
This disproportion tells you everything. Revenue is simple—you received money, you have revenue. Cost is the battlefield.
Was this expenditure incurred for the purpose of generating revenue? Was it properly documented? Does it fall under any of the dozens of exceptions excluding it from deductible costs? Is the proportion correct? Is the timing of recognition proper?
Each of these questions has dozens of answers—depending on interpretation, on case law, on which official happens to be looking at your file.
Transfer Pricing: Where Suspicion Begins
There is one area of CIT that generates particular risk: transactions with related parties.
The logic is straightforward. You have a company in Poland and a company abroad. You sell goods or services between them. If the price is too low in one direction, profit shifts to where the tax rate is lower. If too high, the reverse.
The state views this with suspicion. And it has the right to—transfer pricing has been and continues to be used for aggressive optimization. The problem is that suspicion extends also to transactions that are entirely legitimate.
You must document that prices are at arm’s length. You must demonstrate that transaction terms are what unrelated parties would have established. You must maintain transfer pricing documentation—extensive, detailed, regularly updated.
And then you may still hear that the authority has a different view of what constitutes “arm’s length.”
In this area, it is not enough to be honest. You must be documentably honest.
Consequences You Don’t See at the Start
An error in CIT—real or alleged—triggers a cascade.
First comes the audit. Then tax proceedings. Then a decision determining liability. Then interest—which in multi-year disputes can exceed the principal amount.
And running parallel, in the shadows, something worse: criminal fiscal proceedings.
Because an error in a tax return is not merely a financial matter. It is potentially “stating an untruth” in an official document. It is potentially “tax evasion.” It is potentially charges that cast a shadow over reputation, over the ability to serve on boards, over an entire professional future.
A CIT case can drag on for years. During that time, you live in uncertainty—not knowing whether you will win, how much you will pay if you lose, whether someone will decide to escalate to the criminal level.
This is a cost that appears on no balance sheet.
Strategy, Not Reaction
Most entrepreneurs think about CIT once a year—when filing their return. This is a mistake.
CIT requires continuous thinking. Every significant transaction, every unusual operation, every cost structure should be thought through before execution, not after. Because after the fact, you can only defend what you did. Before the fact, you can do it correctly.
Cost policy is not an accounting matter. It is a strategic matter. Which expenditures you recognize as costs, at what moment, in what proportion—these are decisions with consequences lasting years.
Transfer pricing documentation is not a box to be checked. It is a line of defense in the event of an audit. The quality of that documentation can determine whether a matter ends with explanations or metastasizes into a years-long dispute.
The tax structure of a corporate group is not something you set up once and forget. It is something that requires reviews, updates, adaptation to changing regulations and interpretations.
What We Do
We help establish tax residency—which in the world of international groups is less obvious than it might seem.
We advise on cost structures—how to recognize costs in ways that are both safe and efficient.
We prepare transfer pricing documentation—not templated, but tailored to actual operations and actual risks.
We support ongoing compliance—because the devil is in the details, and details decide audits.
We represent clients in disputes with authorities—because despite the best efforts, audits still come, and interpretations still diverge.
In Closing
CIT is the tax on success. The more you earn, the more you risk.
This risk cannot be eliminated. But it can be managed. Through considered structures, solid documentation, conscious decisions. Through treating taxes not as a necessary evil to be deferred until the last moment, but as an element of business strategy.
Eight thousand interpretations concerning costs means eight thousand opportunities for error. Or—if you know what you’re doing—eight thousand arguments to deploy.
It depends which side you’re standing on.
