Tax Advisory in Poland

The Labyrinth

The Polish tax system is not complicated because anyone designed it that way. It is complicated because it accreted—layer upon layer, amendment upon amendment, interpretation upon interpretation, across decades. Regulations were drafted to address specific problems that have long since ceased to exist. Exceptions to exceptions have created a thicket in which losing one’s way is not a matter of if but when.

And when mistakes are made, it is the taxpayer who bears the consequences.

Tax law will not become simpler. The regulations will continue to change, interpretations will evolve, and the practices of the authorities will drift in one direction or another. One can try to keep pace alone—some manage it. Or one can accept that taxation is a domain in which professional guidance pays for itself.

What Tax Advisory Actually Means

An accountant tells you how much you owe now. A tax advisor tells you how much you should have paid in the past and how much you will need to pay in the future.

The difference is the difference between documenting the present and shaping what comes next. An accountant organizes events as they unfold. A tax advisor analyzes what might unfold—and searches for a way to make it unfold most favorably.

When everything is going well, the advisor is invisible. When an audit arrives, the advisor becomes indispensable.

When to Seek Help

Starting a business — The choice of legal form and taxation method has consequences for years. Changing course is costly or impossible. Better to think it through at the beginning.

Major transactions — Selling a company, merging, dividing, contributing assets in kind, restructuring. Each operation has tax consequences that must be understood before the decision, not after.

International expansion — The moment when one country’s regulations no longer suffice. Questions arise about tax residency, permanent establishments, transfer pricing, double-taxation treaties. Withholding tax on cross-border payments. The interplay of jurisdictions.

Cryptocurrency Tax Advisory – Where New Technologies Meet Traditional Regulations

A tax audit — When the notification arrives, it is already too late to organize your documentation. But it is not too late for professional representation.

A dispute with the tax authority — A tax decision assessing back taxes is not the end of the matter. There is an appeal, there is a complaint to the administrative court. Many cases can be won—but you need to know how.

The Taxes We Navigate

Personal income tax touches everyone who earns—but the complexity varies wildly depending on the source and structure of that income. What appears straightforward becomes labyrinthine once foreign income, capital gains, or business profits enter the picture. And the line between lawful planning and aggressive tax schemes is thinner than many assume.

Corporate income tax presents its own maze: timing of revenue recognition, deductibility of expenses, transfer pricing, related-party transactions. Two companies with similar revenues can have radically different tax burdens depending on how they are organized.

VAT tax in Poland is a world unto itself—brilliant in design, treacherous in practice. VAT refunds that should be routine become months-long battles. VAT return delays transform your working capital into an interest-free loan to the state. And VAT carousel fraud—a crime you may not even know you are adjacent to—can destroy an honest business through guilt by association.

For those wondering how to claim a VAT refund in Poland, the answer is deceptively simple on paper and remarkably difficult in practice.

Tax Optimization: What It Actually Means

The term has acquired negative connotations. It evokes aggressive schemes, tax havens, artificial structures created solely for tax benefit. The association is not groundless—such practices existed and exist.

But tax optimization in its proper sense is something different. It means using solutions the legislature itself provided: reliefs, exemptions, preferential rates, choices among forms of taxation. There is nothing wrong with choosing a legal form that results in lower taxation. There is nothing wrong with planning a transaction to avoid unnecessary burden.

The boundary between lawful optimization and impermissible avoidance exists—it is marked by the GAAR clause, the general anti-avoidance rule that gives authorities power to disregard transactions whose sole purpose is tax benefit. Tax avoidance proceedings can retrospectively requalify years of filings.

The advisor’s job is to know that boundary and not to propose solutions that cross it.

Before You Decide: Opinions and Rulings

Tax opinions and analyses are maps of the terrain before the expedition. They show consequences of planned transactions, identify risks, indicate alternatives. Investing in an opinion before acting is many times cheaper than the costs of a wrong decision.

Individual tax rulings offer something more—formal protection. If you act in accordance with a ruling issued by the authority, you will not suffer negative consequences even if the ruling later proves incorrect. This is one of the few instances where the state assumes the risk of its own errors.

But protection is narrower than people think. The ruling protects only when the facts you described match what you actually do. It protects against penalties, not against the obligation to pay tax. And rulings can be changed—the new interpretation applying from the moment of issuance.

Tax audits serve as reconnaissance of your own position. Before a transaction, before an acquisition, before the authority comes knocking—sometimes it is worth knowing what they would find.

When the Authority Comes Knocking

Preliminary inquiries are the first signal that the tax authority has taken an interest. A tax audit is more serious. A customs and fiscal audit—the most serious, conducted by services with near-police powers.

Each stage requires different strategy. At each, errors can determine the outcome of tax proceedings. The presence of a professional from the first activity is not paranoia—it is prudence.

How should you talk to an auditor? Politely, factually, and as little as possible. Auditors are officials doing their job. Aggression works against you. But politeness is not submission. You do not have to answer every question immediately. You can request questions in writing. You can—and often should—have an advisor present.

The most important rule: do not lie. A lie caught during an audit changes everything. You stop being a taxpayer who made a mistake and become one who tried to deceive. That is a different category—and different consequences.

When the Decision Is Unfavorable

A tax decision is not the end of the road—it is the beginning of the next stage. Tax litigation proceeds through appeals to higher-instance authorities, then to administrative courts. Representation before the courts requires different skills than advisory—knowledge of procedure, skill in argumentation, litigation experience.

Appeals to administrative courts are not rehearings of the case. They are reviews of legality—whether the authority correctly applied the law. This requires different arguments, different strategy.

Is it worth appealing, or better to pay and move on? It depends on three things: whether you are right, what it costs, and how much you can endure. The decision should be conscious. Do not make it under the influence of fear or anger. And do not make it without understanding your chances.

And when the authority acted unlawfully and caused damage? State liability is a path rarely chosen, but sometimes the only just one.

How Engagement Works

One-time consultation — For a specific question or problem. We meet, discuss the situation, present analysis and recommendations. Sometimes that suffices.

Written tax opinion — A formal analysis of a defined issue. Useful when you need a document to rely on, or when the matter requires deeper treatment.

Ongoing tax support — For companies needing continuous assistance. Monitoring regulatory changes, consultations on day-to-day matters, review of planned transactions, assistance in dealings with authorities.

Representation in proceedings — When a matter reaches audit, proceeding, or court. Different work from advisory—requiring procedural knowledge and litigation experience.

The awareness that you have someone you can call changes the way you make decisions. You procrastinate less. You ignore doubts less. Fewer problems grow to crisis proportions.

Skarbiec Law Firm

We have practiced tax advisory since 2006. In that time, we have watched the regulations shift, observed the evolving habits of tax authorities, and tracked the moving boundaries of what is permissible. Certain solutions that were standard practice twenty years ago now qualify as aggressive optimization. Certain approaches that once seemed reckless have since been sanctioned by the courts.

Navigating this terrain requires not only knowledge of the current rules but institutional memory—a sense of the sedimentary layers beneath.

Not everyone needs a tax advisor on retainer. But nearly every entrepreneur, sooner or later, encounters a moment when such help would prove useful.

It is worth knowing where to find it.