The Organized Part of an Enterprise and VAT Exclusion Under Polish Law
Definitional Boundaries, Regulatory Scrutiny, and Recurring Disputes
The Organized Part of an Enterprise and VAT Exclusion Under Polish Law: Definitional Boundaries, Regulatory Scrutiny, and Recurring Disputes
Introduction
Among the most consequential – and most litigated – questions in Polish tax law is the characterization of a transaction as a disposal of an enterprise or its organized part (zorganizowana część przedsiębiorstwa, hereinafter “OPE”) within the meaning of Article 6(1) of the Act of 11 March 2004 on the Tax on Goods and Services (consolidated text: Journal of Laws 2025, item 775; hereinafter “the VAT Act”). The stakes are considerable. A transaction properly characterized as a disposal of an OPE falls entirely outside the scope of the VAT Act – no output tax is charged, no input tax is deducted, and the parties proceed as though the statute were inapplicable. An erroneous characterization, however, generates symmetrical and severe consequences. If the transaction is treated as an OPE disposal when it is not, the purchaser forfeits the right to deduct input VAT, since the invoice documents a transaction that does not constitute a taxable supply (Article 88(3a)(2) of the VAT Act). Conversely, if the parties apply VAT to what is, in substance, an OPE transfer, the vendor records output tax that ought not to have arisen, while the purchaser claims an input deduction to which it was never entitled.
The differential between correct and incorrect characterization frequently amounts to several tens of percent of the transaction value. It is therefore unsurprising that disputes over the boundaries of the OPE concept rank among the most frequent and most costly in Polish VAT practice.
The Statutory Definition: Three Cumulative Conditions of Separateness
Article 2(27e) of the VAT Act defines an organized part of an enterprise as a set of tangible and intangible assets – including liabilities – that is organizationally and financially separated within an existing enterprise, designated for the performance of specific economic tasks, and capable of constituting an independent enterprise autonomously performing those tasks.
From this definition, the administrative courts have derived three cumulative conditions: organizational separateness, financial separateness, and functional separateness. The absence of any one of these conditions precludes classification of a given set of assets as an OPE. See Supreme Administrative Court (hereinafter “SAC”), judgment of 11 April 2024, I FSK 22/20; SAC, judgment of 13 September 2023, I FSK 710/19.
Organizational Separateness: Substance Over Form
Organizational separateness may, but need not, assume a formal character – that is, a branch, establishment, or division formally designated in the entity’s organizational regulations. The SAC has consistently emphasized that organizational separateness may be purely factual in nature, and the absence of formal designation does not preclude OPE classification. SAC, judgment of 11 December 2019, I FSK 1797/17; SAC, judgment of 11 December 2019, I FSK 1212/17. What matters is the functional criterion: whether the particular set of assets constitutes a coherent whole intended for the conduct of a defined economic activity.
At the same time, the mere imposition of departmental form is insufficient where the underlying reality amounts to nothing more than a restructuring and decentralization of management over disparate, unrelated assets, rather than the creation of distinct parts of an enterprise. Voivodeship Administrative Court (hereinafter “VAC”) in Rzeszów, judgment of 12 June 2025, I SA/Rz 177/25. The grouping of assets solely for the convenience of management or in anticipation of a future transfer to a new entity does not, without more, constitute an OPE.
Financial Separateness: Accounting Traceability, Not an Independent Balance Sheet
Financial separateness does not require the preparation of an independent balance sheet. It is sufficient that, through appropriate accounting records, revenues and costs, as well as receivables and liabilities, can be attributed to the organized part of the enterprise. SAC, judgment of 20 March 2012, I FSK 815/11; VAC in Poznań, judgment of 11 December 2019, I SA/Po 747/19. In practice, this means that management accounting enabling identification of the financial results of a given set of assets will satisfy the statutory threshold.
As the VAC in Szczecin aptly observed, financial separateness denotes a situation in which it is possible to distinguish the finances of the enterprise from the finances of its organized part. VAC in Szczecin, judgment of 13 February 2019, I SA/Sz 894/18.
Functional Separateness: The Capacity for Autonomous Operation
This is the most demanding condition and the one that most frequently determines the outcome of disputes. In a pair of judgments dated 14 March 2023, the SAC articulated a principle that has become a definitive litmus test: the relevant inquiry is not whether a set of assets, once integrated into the purchaser’s enterprise and supplemented by additional measures – such as the conclusion of lease agreements or the engagement of personnel – could function as an independent establishment, but rather whether the set of assets as transferred already possesses the capacity for autonomous operation. SAC, judgments of 14 March 2023, I FSK 198/20 and I FSK 2093/18.
In other words, the capacity for independent economic activity must be assessed in the configuration in which the assets are being disposed of, not in the configuration they might acquire following additional investment by the purchaser. VAC in Kraków, judgment of 12 September 2024, I SA/Kr 629/24; SAC, judgment of 23 November 2017, I FSK 327/16.
III. Regulatory Verification: How Tax Authorities Assess OPE Classification
The Transferor’s Perspective as the Starting Point
The tax authorities correctly take as their analytical point of departure the position of the transferor. The statutory definition refers to assets separated “within an existing enterprise,” thereby anchoring the inquiry in the transferor’s actual, ongoing business operations. It is at the level of the transferor that a set of tangible and intangible assets must be organizationally and financially separated, designated for specific economic tasks, and capable of constituting an independent enterprise. SAC, judgment of 21 January 2020, I FSK 1343/17; VAC in Rzeszów, judgment of 18 October 2022, I SA/Rz 465/22; see also T. Michalik, Commentary on Article 6 of the VAT Act (17th ed. 2024), paras. 23 and 35.
The circumstance that the purchaser will conduct analogous business operations does not, of itself, render the transaction an OPE disposal. What is required is that the assets constitute an OPE at the level of the transferor – a fundamental rule reiterated with unwavering consistency by the administrative courts.
The Continuity Test: The Transferee’s Intention to Operate
The second element of verification concerns the purchaser, albeit in a limited respect. The Court of Justice of the European Union (hereinafter “CJEU”), in Zita Modes (Case C-497/01), held that the transferee must intend to operate the acquired business, rather than to immediately liquidate it and dispose of the stock. The SAC has confirmed this principle, holding that the exclusion under Article 6(1) of the VAT Act applies only to transactions in which the purchaser will conduct economic activity on the basis of the transferred assets. SAC, judgment of 4 March 2015, I FSK 113/14; SAC, judgment of 19 April 2023, I FSK 853/20.
Crucially, the transferee need not continue precisely the same type of economic activity as the transferor. What is required is the preservation of the intended purpose of the acquired set of assets – not sectoral identity of activity. SAC, judgment of 1 March 2013, I FSK 375/12; SAC, judgment of 27 August 2019, I FSK 1265/17; VAC in Poznań, judgment of 1 July 2020, I SA/Po 747/19.
The outer boundary of this principle was delineated in the SAC’s judgment of 19 April 2023 (I FSK 853/20): where the purchaser treats the OPE exclusively as “commercial goods” (towar handlowy) for immediate resale – and in fact disposes of it on the same day as the purchase – the Article 6(1) exclusion does not apply, even if the ultimate acquirer intends to operate the business.
The Comparative Method: Inventory Versus Function
Tax authorities occasionally employ a method consisting of a comparison between the catalogue of assets held by the transferor and the list of assets conveyed to the purchaser. The SAC has unequivocally rejected the sufficiency of this approach, holding that what is determinative is the functional and organizational nexus among the acquired assets – namely, whether they constitute a whole capableEnglish of sustaining economic activity. SAC, judgment of 30 June 2021, I FSK 1453/19.
The enumeration of enterprise components in Article 55¹ of the Civil Code is illustrative, not exhaustive – it is not necessary that an enterprise (and, mutatis mutandis, an OPE) include every category of asset there specified. However, where elements that are functionally essential – those without which the enterprise cannot operate – are excluded from the transaction, the OPE classification is undermined. See T. Michalik, Commentary on Article 6 of the VAT Act (17th ed. 2024), paras. 22 – 23 (with reference to the enterprise).
IV. Recurring Disputes: A Jurisprudential Map
Real Estate Transactions: The Most Frequently Litigated Category
By a considerable margin, the largest class of disputes concerning OPE classification involves real property, particularly commercial real estate utilized for leasing activities. The case law on this point is both consistent and exacting: real property alone, even where improved, does not constitute a whole capable of conducting independent economic activity and therefore does not qualify as an OPE, even where the vendor utilized the property for rental operations. SAC, judgment of 17 May 2024, I FSK 1280/22; SAC, judgment of 15 July 2025, I FSK 646/22; SAC, judgment of 12 January 2021, I FSK 299/20; SAC, judgment of 12 January 2021, I FSK 324/20; SAC, judgment of 12 March 2021, I FSK 177/20; SAC, judgment of 27 May 2021, I FSK 300/20.
The governing formulation, repeated across dozens of judgments, is instructive: “The sale of individual or even all real properties cannot be regarded as a sale of an organized part of an enterprise. Without the entire structure constituting the rental business – it remains merely a sale of real property as asset components.”
The purchaser’s automatic succession to existing lease agreements by operation of law (Article 678 § 1 of the Civil Code) is insufficient to characterize the transaction as an OPE disposal. The conduct of a rental business requires the servicing of both the agreements and the property itself – personnel, service contracts, and tenant settlement systems. Only the sale of a separated operational unit (zakład) encompassing this entire infrastructure could satisfy the OPE conditions.
A notable exception appears in the SAC’s judgment of 20 April 2018 (I FSK 1113/16), where the court held that a large shopping center that had passed to the purchaser in a harmonious manner and continued to operate in unchanged form and under an unchanged name constituted an enterprise within the meaning of Article 6(1) of the VAT Act. The distinction lay in the fact that the transaction encompassed not merely the building, but the entire organizational structure enabling the center’s operation.
Leased Premises: The CJEU Standard
The CJEU, in Christel Schriever (Case C-444/10), clarified that a transfer of ownership of real property is not an absolute prerequisite – it suffices that the premises be made available to the purchaser by way of a lease, provided that the transferred assets are sufficient for the purchaser to carry on an independent economic activity on a lasting basis. Polish courts have consistently applied this standard. VAC in Gdańsk, judgment of 1 December 2016, I SA/Gd 1170/16.
Simultaneously, the CJEU in Mailat (Case C-17/18) drew the boundary in the opposite direction: the mere rental of all assets, without any transfer of ownership, does not constitute a transfer of a totality of assets within the meaning of Article 19 of Directive 2006/112/EC. This is a significant demarcation: a lease of premises accompanying a sale of movables and intangible assets may suffice, but a lease of all components – absent any transfer of title whatsoever – does not.
Absence of Ancillary Contracts
The SAC, in its judgment of 28 July 2023 (I FSK 892/18), held that the failure to continue ancillary and auxiliary contracts – insurance, maintenance, utility supply – does not materially impair the capacity to carry on business operations. In the case of utilities or waste collection, the conclusion of new agreements is typically a structural necessity inherent in the nature of such arrangements, rather than an indication that the OPE lacks the capacity for autonomous operation.
This is a sound approach. Were the need to execute new electricity supply contracts sufficient to defeat OPE classification, the norm contained in Article 6(1) of the VAT Act would be rendered a practical nullity.
Exclusion of Individual Components
The case law and doctrine accept that the exclusion of individual components from a transaction does not automatically defeat OPE classification, provided the excluded elements are not of material significance to the functioning of the enterprise (see T. Michalik, Commentary on Article 6 of the VAT Act, 17th ed. 2024, para. 24). The exclusion of shareholdings in a third-party entity (where securities trading does not form part of the transferor’s business) does not preclude the application of Article 6(1). VAC in Warsaw, judgment of 28 April 2011, III SA/Wa 1767/10. Liabilities do not constitute an essential element of the enterprise definition, and their exclusion is not determinative. SAC, judgment of 27 April 2012, I FSK 1039/11.
By contrast, the exclusion of functionally critical elements – such as the trade name (firma), trademarks, or key concessions that define the character of the business activity – may preclude characterization as an OPE disposal. A thorough legal audit (due diligence) prior to the transaction is therefore of paramount importance for proper classification. As Michalik observes (Commentary on Article 6 of the VAT Act, 17th ed. 2024, para. 23), one cannot speak of a sale of an enterprise where functionally essential elements of that enterprise are not being conveyed.
An interesting exception concerns public-law concessions. The VAC in Gdańsk (judgment of 5 December 2017, I SA/Gd 1130/17) correctly held that the failure to transfer a fuel distribution concession does not preclude classification of the transaction as an enterprise disposal, since a concession constitutes a public-law entitlement of a personal nature (uprawnienie podmiotowe) and is excluded from civil-law transactions.
Construction-in-Progress: Generally Not an OPE
A consistent line of authority excludes from OPE classification construction-in-progress, investment projects, and structures in a shell condition. A plot of land together with a building under construction, a building permit, a construction contract, and letters of intent does not satisfy the OPE definition. VAC in Gdańsk, judgment of 4 December 2013, I SA/Gd 1205/13; SAC, judgment of 25 June 2015, I FSK 572/14. Structures under construction cannot perform specific economic tasks – and the capacity to do so constitutes an inherent feature of an OPE. SAC, judgment of 30 November 2017, I FSK 418/16.
Multi-Transaction Disposals: Consolidation of Formally Distinct Transactions
Tax authorities may consolidate several formally distinct transactions – including corporate demergers – and treat them collectively as an enterprise disposal. The SAC, in its judgment of 7 December 2012 (I FSK 89/12), held that formally separate transactions may be regarded as a single transaction where they are not independent of one another. Earlier, the Supreme Court (judgment of 24 June 1998, I CKN 780/97; see also T. Michalik, Commentary on Article 6 of the VAT Act, 17th ed. 2024, para. 27) held that where the circumstances of two contracts indicate that one involved the assumption of liabilities and the other the acquisition of assets, the contracts may be treated collectively as an enterprise disposal.
The VAC in Kielce (judgment of 9 June 2022, I SA/Ke 118/22) confirmed that nothing in Articles 2(27e) and 6(1) of the VAT Act requires that an OPE be acquired through a single contract. Two functionally linked agreements, the second of which completes the first, may together effect an OPE transfer.
This principle operates in both directions. Tax authorities may recharacterize dispersed transactions as an enterprise disposal – a result that may prove unexpected for parties who intended to apply VAT to individual deliveries. In merger and acquisition transactions, analysis of this recharacterization risk should form a standard element of transactional due diligence.
V. The EU Law Framework: An Autonomous Concept Under the VAT Directive
Article 6(1) of the VAT Act implements Article 19 of Council Directive 2006/112/EC (formerly Article 5(8) of the Sixth VAT Directive), which employs the concept of “a transfer of a totality of assets or part thereof.” The SAC has repeatedly emphasized that the concepts of “enterprise” and “OPE” under the VAT Act must be interpreted through a pro-Union lens, with due regard to the jurisprudence of the CJEU. SAC, judgment of 1 October 2020, I FSK 12/18. Two judgments of the Court – Zita Modes and Schriever – constitute the interpretive foundation of this concept and merit detailed examination.
Zita Modes (Case C-497/01): Defining the Concept and the Limits of Member State Discretion
The facts of Zita Modes were deceptively straightforward. A Luxembourg company operating a prêt-à-porter clothing shop sold its business to Milady, a company operating a perfumery. The Luxembourg tax administration refused to apply the no-supply rule, arguing that the transferee was not continuing the same business activity as the transferor and, moreover, did not hold the requisite administrative authorization to operate in the clothing sector.
In its judgment of 27 November 2003, the Court articulated several principles of foundational significance for the entirety of EU VAT law.
First, the concept of “a transfer of a totality of assets or part thereof” is an autonomous concept of European Union law, to be interpreted uniformly throughout the Union, independent of the domestic law of the Member States (paras. 32 – 35). The Court emphasized that the no-supply rule constitutes – in a manner analogous to the exemptions under Article 13 of the Sixth Directive – an independent concept of Community law, the purpose of which is to prevent divergences in the application of the VAT system across Member States (para. 32).
Second, the Court delineated the scope of the concept: it encompasses the transfer of a business or an independent part of an undertaking, including tangible elements and, as the case may be, intangible elements which, together, constitute an undertaking or a part of an undertaking capable of carrying on an independent economic activity. The concept does not, however, encompass a simple transfer of goods, such as the sale of a stock of products (para. 40).
Third – and this holding carries particular practical significance – the Court ruled that nothing in Article 5(8) of the Sixth Directive requires that the transferee pursue, prior to the transfer, the same type of economic activity as the transferor (para. 45). The transferee must merely intend to operate the acquired business, rather than to immediately liquidate the activity and dispose of any stock (para. 44). The operative distinction is thus between continuation and liquidation – not between identity and difference of activity. This is the proper test of transferee intention.
Fourth, the Court categorically excluded the possibility of conditioning the no-supply rule upon the transferee’s possession of an administrative authorization to conduct the relevant business. Such a restriction infringes Article 5(8) of the Sixth Directive, since the sole permissible basis for restricting the exclusion is the situation where the transferee is not wholly liable to tax – not the absence of a business license (paras. 49 – 55). The Court invoked the principle of fiscal neutrality, pursuant to which transactions that are unlawful not by their very nature but by reason of the circumstances of their performance – such as the lack of a concession – are subject to taxation on the same terms as lawful transactions (paras. 51 – 53).
The Court identified the purpose of the provision in unambiguous terms: it is intended to enable the Member States to facilitate transfers of undertakings by simplifying such transactions and by preventing the overburdening of the transferee’s resources with a disproportionate tax charge that would, in any event, ultimately be recovered through input VAT deduction (para. 39). The regulation is thus of a simplificatory and protective character – it shields the transferee’s liquidity rather than generating a tax advantage.
Christel Schriever (Case C-444/10): Real Property, Lease Arrangements, and the Holistic Assessment
The Schriever judgment of 10 November 2011 refined the Zita Modes standard with respect to one of the most common factual configurations in practice: the disposal of movable enterprise assets accompanied by a lease – rather than a sale – of the premises in which the business is conducted.
Christel Schriever operated a retail sports goods shop in premises of which she was the owner. In 1996, she sold the inventory and shop equipment to Sport S. GmbH, while simultaneously leasing the commercial premises to that company for an indefinite period, subject to short-notice termination by either party. The German tax authority (Finanzamt Lüdenscheid) contested the classification of the transaction as a transfer of an enterprise, arguing that the real property – an essential element of the business – had not been conveyed to the purchaser.
The Court formulated three pivotal rules in this judgment.
The first rule concerns the role of real property in the assessment of a transaction. The question whether the transferred assets must include real property is to be evaluated from the perspective of the character of the economic activity conducted (para. 26). Where the activity does not require the use of specific premises or premises equipped with fixed installations, a transfer of assets within the meaning of Article 5(8) may occur without any conveyance of real property rights (para. 27). Where, however, the activity involves the use of an indivisible assemblage of movable and immovable property – and in particular where the premises are equipped with fixed installations necessary for the conduct of the activity – the real property must form part of the transferred assets, though it need not be the subject of an ownership transfer (para. 28). It suffices that the premises be made available by way of a lease, or that the purchaser have access to suitable premises to which the acquired assets may be relocated (para. 29).
The Court correctly observed that an alternative interpretation would produce an arbitrary distinction between transferors who own the premises in which the business operates and those who merely lease them – a distinction that no provision of the Directive contemplates (para. 30). With specific reference to retail trade, the Court stated explicitly: “the continuation of a shop does not normally require the owner of the business to also be the owner of the property in which the shop operates” (para. 34), and accordingly, “the transfer of the property is not of decisive significance from the standpoint of classifying the transaction as a transfer of assets” (para. 35).
The second rule addresses the impact of lease terms on transaction classification. The duration of the lease and the agreed modalities for its termination are to be taken into account in the holistic assessment of the transfer transaction, as they may bear upon whether the economic activity can be conducted on a lasting basis (para. 42). However – and this is the crux of the ruling – the mere possibility of terminating an indefinite-term lease on short notice does not, in itself, indicate that the transferee intended to immediately liquidate the transferred business. The no-supply rule cannot be denied solely on that ground (para. 43). The Court emphasized that conditioning the application of Article 5(8) upon the terms of the lease would infringe the principle of fiscal neutrality, which prohibits the differential treatment of economic operators carrying out identical transactions (para. 44).
The third rule – methodological in nature – directs that a holistic assessment of the factual circumstances (overall assessment) be conducted, in which the character of the economic activity assumes particular significance (para. 32). The transferee’s intention may, and in certain cases should, be taken into account, provided it can be established on the basis of objective indicia (para. 38). In this context, the fact that the purchaser continued to operate the shop for nearly two years constituted sufficient evidence that immediate liquidation was not intended (para. 39).
Implications for Polish Practice
Both CJEU judgments have direct consequences for the application of Article 6(1) of the VAT Act. First, Polish tax authorities may not apply a definition of OPE narrower than that derived from the Court’s jurisprudence – the conceptual autonomy of EU law is binding in this regard. Second, the transferee intention test should be applied with circumspection: the operative criterion distinguishes between the intention to operate and the intention to immediately liquidate and sell, not between identical and dissimilar business activities. Third, the terms of a real property lease – even a short notice period – cannot, of themselves, preclude OPE classification.
VI. The Implementation Gap: Succession to the Transferor’s VAT Position
The Directive provides that the transferee is to be treated as the transferor’s successor. Polish law implements this principle only partially: Article 91(9) of the VAT Act imposes upon the purchaser the obligation to continue input VAT adjustments, but does not establish comprehensive legal succession (see T. Michalik, Commentary on Article 6 of the VAT Act, 17th ed. 2024, paras. 54 – 57). The SAC has held, however, that in the absence of full implementation, the purchaser may rely directly upon Article 19 of Directive 2006/112/EC. SAC, judgment of 29 May 2014, I FSK 1027/13; SAC, judgment of 30 June 2021, I FSK 2240/19. This means that the purchaser of an enterprise, as the transferor’s successor, is entitled to deduct input VAT and to make adjustments exceeding the scope of Article 91(9) of the VAT Act.
It bears emphasis, in this connection, that as the CJEU made clear in Faxworld (Case C-137/02; see also T. Michalik, Commentary on Article 6 of the VAT Act, 17th ed. 2024, paras. 45 – 46), the purpose of the provision is not to interrupt the chain of deductions but to ensure that the transfer of assets does not disturb the principle of tax neutrality as between both parties to the transaction. The tax status of the transferee, and whether the assets are being acquired for the purpose of taxable transactions, bears fundamental significance for the transferor’s right to deduct input VAT – a principle the CJEU confirmed by permitting the linking of purchases made by the transferor to taxable supplies effected by the purchaser of the assets.
VII. Cross-Tax Consistency: The Principle of Legitimate Expectations
The VAC in Łódź (judgment of 7 July 2021, I SA/Łd 309/21) articulated an important procedural rule: where the tax authority has confirmed, in individual rulings issued under the corporate income tax (CIT) and personal income tax (PIT) regimes, the classification of the subject matter of a transaction as an OPE, it may not effectively challenge that classification under the VAT regime without infringing Article 121 § 1 of the Tax Ordinance Act – the principle of legitimate expectations (zasada zaufania). Professional tax advisory at the transaction planning stage is essential to avoid costly classification errors. This constitutes a meaningful constraint upon tax authorities that occasionally attempt to apply different characterizations to the same transaction depending on the tax at issue.
VIII. Conclusion
The classification of a transaction as a disposal of an organized part of an enterprise requires the satisfaction of three cumulative conditions of separateness – organizational, financial, and functional – assessed from the perspective of the transferor and at the moment of disposal. The transferee must intend to conduct economic activity utilizing the acquired assets, though it need not continue an identical type of business.
The most prevalent error in practice is the assumption that real property utilized for rental activities automatically constitutes an OPE. The case law on this point is unequivocal: real property alone – even when accompanied by lease agreements – does not constitute an OPE absent the accompanying organizational structure. Conversely, the exclusion of elements of marginal functional significance does not deprive the transaction of its character as an OPE disposal.
In borderline cases, it may be advisable to seek an individual tax ruling, while bearing in mind the risk aptly identified by the SAC: the factual description presented in a ruling application is binding regardless of its conformity with reality, and the “risk” of providing an incomplete factual account falls upon the applicant. SAC, judgment of 23 November 2017, I FSK 327/16.
Legal basis: Articles 6(1) and 2(27e) of the Act of 11 March 2004 on the Tax on Goods and Services (Journal of Laws 2025, item 775, consolidated text); Article 19 of Council Directive 2006/112/EC of 28 November 2006 on the common system of value added tax (OJ L 347, p. 1); Article 55¹ of the Act of 23 April 1964 – Civil Code (Journal of Laws 2024, item 1061, consolidated text).
Robert Nogacki – licensed legal counsel (radca prawny, WA-9026), Founder of Kancelaria Prawna Skarbiec.
There are lawyers who practice law. And there are those who deal with problems for which the law has no ready answer. For over twenty years, Kancelaria Skarbiec has worked at the intersection of tax law, corporate structures, and the deeply human reluctance to give the state more than the state is owed. We advise entrepreneurs from over a dozen countries – from those on the Forbes list to those whose bank account was just seized by the tax authority and who do not know what to do tomorrow morning.
One of the most frequently cited experts on tax law in Polish media – he writes for Rzeczpospolita, Dziennik Gazeta Prawna, and Parkiet not because it looks good on a résumé, but because certain things cannot be explained in a court filing and someone needs to say them out loud. Author of AI Decoding Satoshi Nakamoto: Artificial Intelligence on the Trail of Bitcoin’s Creator. Co-author of the award-winning book Bezpieczeństwo współczesnej firmy (Security of a Modern Company).
Kancelaria Skarbiec holds top positions in the tax law firm rankings of Dziennik Gazeta Prawna. Four-time winner of the European Medal, recipient of the title International Tax Planning Law Firm of the Year in Poland.
He specializes in tax disputes with fiscal authorities, international tax planning, crypto-asset regulation, and asset protection. Since 2006, he has led the WGI case – one of the longest-running criminal proceedings in the history of the Polish financial market – because there are things you do not leave half-done, even if they take two decades. He believes the law is too serious to be treated only seriously – and that the best legal advice is the kind that ensures the client never has to stand before a court.
