Polish Whitelist
Poland has published online a database of VAT registered businesses. It is a list of VAT payers, which contains several important information about Poland's business activity. The list includes, among others, bank account numbers of VAT taxpayers.
Besides the monthly SAF-T VAT file in Poland, companies have to meet the SAF-T obligation 'on request' containing different legal requirements. This submission applies in case of a preliminary tax inquiry, a tax audit, and tax proceedings where the SAF-T file should be provided to the PL tax authorities in a short timeframe. To avoid disputes and or penalties, it is therefore vital that a company is ready.
When a buyer makes a payment larger than PLN 15,000 to a supplier who is not on the list, the buyers can no longer deduct the expenses for income tax purposes. Payments made to accounts not included in the lists, the buyer will result in joint liability for the VAT obligations - up to the VAT amount of the underlying transaction - of the supplier. The sanctions are in force since January 1, 2020. The single list contains the following information:
- Entities which were not registered for VAT purposes (or were de-registered);
- Entities registered as the VAT taxpayers (i.e., data on active and exempt VAT taxpayers), including entities whose registration as VAT taxpayers has been restored.
- Bank accounts numbers are indicated in the tax identification or update notifications.
- The list can be maintained and updated daily.
What does it mean?
Taxpayers should integrate the white list check as a mandatory internal control during payment and settlement processes. From a tax perspective, the following adjustments need to be made to minimize tax risks:
- Verify, before executing a payment (i.e., on the day of the transfer order), that payment is made to the bank account included in the list; and
- Once payments are executed, verify whether payments were made to bank accounts contained in the list
- Notify the head of the respective tax office about any potential errors within three days from the transfer order date to avoid sanctions.
What do we offer?
For companies running SAP, KGT has developed an SAP add-on where the relevant data is checked automatically. The add-on populates from SAP all relevant data available in the white list and validates in a batch job this data with the data of the Whitelist. The cockpit displays any errors and correctness.
The results are also archived in SAP. A taxpayer can prove during a future tax audit that it has implemented 'state of the art' tax controls. From tax risk management, it is also possible to check the transactions that already took place.
