On the particular crime of failing to maintain proper accounting records—and why it matters even when no tax goes unpaid
There is a peculiar category of offense in Polish fiscal law, one that punishes the absence of a thing rather than the presence of wrongdoing. Article 60 of the Fiscal Penal Code concerns itself not with tax evasion, not with fraudulent declarations, but with something at once more prosaic and more philosophically interesting: the failure to maintain books. The ledgers, the records, the quotidian documentation of commercial life. You can pay every zloty you owe, file every return on time, and still find yourself facing criminal charges—simply because you neglected to write it all down.
The maximum penalty runs to two hundred and forty daily rates, a sum that can reach several hundred thousand złoty depending on the offender’s income. It is, in the dry parlance of legal scholarship, a “formal offense”—meaning that actual harm to the state treasury is beside the point. The crime is complete the moment the obligation goes unfulfilled.
For tax authorities, accounting records are not bureaucratic appendages. They are the primary instrument of verification, the source material from which declarations and returns derive their legitimacy. In any tax proceeding, properly maintained books constitute evidence of the first order—the foundation upon which all other documentation rests.
The trouble is that many entrepreneurs treat these obligations as afterthoughts. They establish a ledger with the best of intentions, then allow months to pass without a single entry. They assume, not unreasonably, that if the taxes get paid, the formalities will sort themselves out. This assumption is mistaken. The mere fact of non-maintenance suffices for prosecution, regardless of whether the treasury has lost so much as a grosz.
Three Paths to Liability
The first is straightforward: you are required to maintain a particular type of record—a revenue and expense ledger, perhaps, or full accounting books—and you simply do not. Or you begin, then stop. If most of a reporting period passes without entries (twenty-five days of a thirty-day month, say), authorities may treat this not as sloppy bookkeeping but as non-maintenance altogether. The distinction carries legal weight.
The second concerns location. Books must be kept at the place of business, at the registered office, or—if accounting has been outsourced—at the location specified in the contract with the accounting firm. Keep your documentation at home while your company’s registered address is elsewhere, and you have committed a violation. There is, however, some room for leniency here: storing records in the wrong place, as opposed to not storing them at all, may qualify as a “minor case,” reducing the offense from a fiscal crime to a mere fiscal misdemeanor.
The third involves disclosure. If you entrust your books to an external party—a tax advisor, an accounting bureau—you must notify the tax office within fifteen days for full accounting books, seven days for the simpler revenue and expense ledger. Failure to provide this notification constitutes a separate violation.
The Question of Who
When books are maintained externally, liability becomes a matter of contractual interpretation. Both the entrepreneur and the accounting firm may face exposure, but the allocation depends on the actual division of responsibilities.
The firm can be held liable under Article 9 § 3 of the Code, but only if it had genuine capacity to fulfill the obligation—meaning it received the necessary source documents—and its contractual duties encompassed the activities in question. In practice, the taxpayer typically remains responsible for delivering invoices and supporting materials. If the entrepreneur fails to provide them, blaming the accountant becomes difficult to sustain.
When Liability Dissolves
Mistake as to obligation presents the cleanest defense. If you genuinely did not know you were required to maintain a particular type of record—perhaps you crossed a revenue threshold mandating full accounting books without realizing it—you may invoke error as to the elements of the offense. This negates intent, and the crime under Article 60 requires intent for conviction.
A related situation arises when someone maintains the wrong type of record. Keeping a revenue and expense ledger when full accounting books are required technically constitutes “non-maintenance” of the proper records. But if this resulted from a miscalculation of turnover or honest confusion about thresholds, the error defense may again apply.
External destruction offers another exit. Theft, fire, flood, damage by third parties—these circumstances preclude the attribution of fault, provided they can be demonstrated.
The Minor Case
Any violation under Article 60 may be classified as a “minor case,” transforming a fiscal crime into a fiscal misdemeanor with correspondingly reduced penalties. Circumstances favoring this classification include: brief duration of the violation, absence of actual harm to public revenues, modest scale of operations, storage of records in the wrong location rather than complete absence, and prompt remediation once the deficiency was discovered.
One caveat: even a minor case requires intent. If you acted in complete ignorance, the better argument may be absence of the mental element altogether, not merely reduced culpability.
The Afterlife of Documents
Retention obligations extend well beyond what many entrepreneurs assume. The Tax Ordinance requires preservation until the statute of limitations on the relevant tax obligation expires. The Accounting Act imposes varying periods depending on document type. Premature destruction creates not only criminal exposure but evidentiary problems should an audit materialize.
A Note on Prudence
If uncertainty exists about whether your record-keeping obligations are being properly fulfilled, verification before the tax office conducts its own is advisable. If a summons has already arrived citing Article 60, providing explanations without legal consultation is inadvisable. The optimal defense depends on circumstances—sometimes the absence of intent proves most compelling, sometimes the minor-case classification, sometimes the argument that liability properly belongs to an external service provider.
The books, it turns out, matter—even when, especially when, everything else appears to be in order.
