Individual Tax Rulings in Poland: Compelling the State to Commit
The individual tax ruling represents a remarkable anomaly within the Polish legal framework: a mechanism through which a taxpayer may pose a question to the State and receive an answer that binds the State itself. Where a taxpayer acts in reliance upon such a ruling, adverse consequences cannot follow—even where the ruling subsequently proves erroneous, even where the tax authorities later adopt a contrary position.
This constitutes a powerful instrument of legal protection. And like all powerful instruments, it demands considerable skill in its deployment.
The Protective Mechanism
The statutory foundation is straightforward: Article 14b of the Tax Ordinance Act (Ordynacja podatkowa). The Director of the National Tax Information Office (Dyrektor Krajowej Informacji Skarbowej) issues individual tax rulings upon application by interested parties. Such applications may address factual circumstances already in existence or contemplated future transactions.
In theory, the procedure appears transparent. The applicant describes the relevant circumstances, poses a question, and advances a proposed legal interpretation. The authority evaluates whether the applicant’s position is correct. If so, it confirms. If not, it articulates the correct position with supporting reasoning.
In practice, matters prove considerably more complex.
The Gap Between Doctrine and Practice
The Director maintains a three-month statutory deadline for issuing rulings. Yet the authority possesses an arsenal of procedural devices to circumvent this timeline—or to issue a ruling that resolves nothing of substance.
The authority may demand supplementary information. It may determine that the factual description is insufficiently detailed. It may conclude that the question exceeds the permissible scope of the ruling procedure—perhaps because it touches upon anti-avoidance provisions or abuse of law doctrines. It may issue a ruling so narrowly circumscribed that it fails to address the actual situation that prompted the inquiry.
This is not paranoia—it is quotidian reality. Tax authorities exhibit institutional reluctance to issue tax rulings favorable to taxpayers, as each such ruling constrains their subsequent discretionary latitude. Accordingly, they seek grounds for refusal, for limitation, for preserving interpretive flexibility.
A poorly drafted application—excessively general, excessively detailed, ambiguous at critical junctures—furnishes the authority with pretextual grounds. A well-drafted application—precise, comprehensive, foreclosing avenues of evasion—compels the authority to take a definitive position.
The Art of Interrogation
Drafting an application for an individual tax ruling transcends mere form completion. It constitutes an art—one in which form carries equal significance to substance.
The factual description must be articulated such that the authority cannot credibly assert incomprehension or informational insufficiency. Yet simultaneously, it must contain nothing superfluous—each extraneous detail represents a potential avenue for subsequent challenge should reality diverge even marginally from the description.
The question must be formulated to elicit a useful response. An excessively narrow question yields an answer that fails to encompass relevant variants. An excessively broad question invites an evasive response or outright refusal.
The applicant’s proposed interpretation must be persuasive yet measured. The authority formally evaluates whether the applicant’s position is correct—where it concurs, it need not articulate independent reasoning. A well-constructed interpretive position facilitates the authority’s affirmative response.
This is work in which experience proves determinative. One who has drafted scores of applications and analyzed scores of responses understands where pitfalls lie. One approaching this for the first time enters a minefield blindfolded.
When the Response Proves Unfavorable
A negative ruling—one determining that the applicant’s position is incorrect—does not conclude the matter.
The applicant may challenge the tax ruling before the Regional Administrative Court (Wojewódzki Sąd Administracyjny). The court examines whether the authority correctly applied the law. Where it concludes otherwise, it annuls the ruling and remands for reconsideration.
This is not merely theoretical. Courts regularly annul rulings—sometimes because the authority misapprehended the factual circumstances, sometimes because it misinterpreted the applicable provisions, sometimes because it failed entirely to address the applicant’s arguments.
A complaint requires legal grounds and substantive argumentation. It demands familiarity with jurisprudence—administrative courts consider how analogous matters have been previously resolved. It also demands strategic judgment: sometimes litigation is advisable, sometimes a reformulated application proves superior, sometimes awaiting evolution in interpretive trends represents the optimal course.
The Limits of Protection
Not every question may properly form the subject of an individual tax ruling.
The Director will refuse to issue a ruling where the matter concerns anti-avoidance provisions, measures limiting treaty benefits, or abuse of law under VAT legislation. Refusal likewise follows where the matter is already subject to pending tax audit, customs and fiscal audit, or tax proceedings.
Moreover, since 2016, the authority may refuse to issue a ruling where it harbors “reasonable suspicion” that the described transaction may constitute tax avoidance. This represents an exceptionally broad discretionary gateway, though administrative courts have begun to impose limiting constructions.
Our Practice
We prepare and submit applications for individual tax rulings—with full appreciation that a well-drafted application represents half the battle.
We challenge negative rulings before administrative courts—where the authority has misapplied the law or evaded substantive response.
We advise on whether a ruling constitutes the appropriate instrument—recognizing that alternative mechanisms, including protective opinions, binding rate information, or investment agreements, may sometimes prove superior.
The individual tax ruling offers a pathway to legal certainty in a system that systematically withholds such certainty. But to utilize this instrument effectively, one must understand how to wield it.
Robert Nogacki is a Polish attorney at law (radca prawny), the founder and managing partner of Kancelaria Prawna Skarbiec (Skarbiec Law Firm), which has operated continuously since 2006.
The law is equal for everyone, but the parties rarely are: on one side stands an organization with time, money, and lawyers, on the other a person with one business, one nest egg, and one life.
Clients rarely come to him with a legal problem. They come with a problem that also has a legal side: an audit that began with a single invoice, money entrusted to someone who has disappeared, a company that has to be passed on before it is too late. Most such matters are decided long before the first letter is written, in decisions made without asking and in deadlines nobody remembered. So he begins by asking how the client got here, not what the client should have done.
He advises entrepreneurs and families from more than a dozen countries, including those whose accounts the tax office has just seized and who do not know what to do tomorrow morning. He defends them in tax audits, customs and fiscal inspections, disputes with the tax authorities, and criminal tax proceedings. He represents victims of investment fraud and Ponzi schemes. He helps families set up family foundations and plan succession, so that a life’s work outlasts a single generation.
Not every case can be won. Every case can be run so that the client knows where they stand. Since 2006 he has represented the victims in the WGI case (Warszawska Grupa Inwestycyjna, the Warsaw Investment Group), one of the longest criminal cases in the history of the Polish financial market, because some things must not be left half finished, even when they take two decades. In the case of the collapsed cryptocurrency exchange Zonda (Zondacrypto, operated by BB Trade Estonia OÜ), he represents several hundred victims in the criminal investigation conducted by Poland’s National Prosecutor’s Office and in the Estonian bankruptcy proceedings.
Kancelaria Prawna Skarbiec is listed in the rankings of Poland’s largest tax advisory firms published by Dziennik Gazeta Prawna and Rzeczpospolita, and it is a four-time recipient (2015 to 2018) of the European Medal awarded by the Business Centre Club and the European Economic and Social Committee. Robert Nogacki publishes regularly, in the press and on the firm’s website, for people who have a problem rather than a law degree, because a legal opinion the client cannot understand protects only the lawyer.
He believes that the best legal advice is the kind that means the client never has to appear in court.
