White list of VAT taxpayers will come into force in September 2019

Electronic list of VAT taxpayers in Poland

According to the Act, the Head of the National Revenue Administration will maintain, in electronic form, the list containing data on:

• 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.

As a result, the existing registers will be merged into a single list, which will be extended by the additional data (e.g. bank accounts numbers indicated in the tax identification or update notifications).

According to the Ministry of Finance, the white list will support verification of counterparties.

The list will be maintained and updated daily. Taxpayers using the list will receive information on date and time when verification of particular entity took place. It will be possible to verify your counterparty on a current basis as well as retrospectively: up to 5 years preceding the year in which verification is made.

Penalties for payments made to an account other than the one shown in the list

According to the Act, expenses paid via transfer to bank account not included in the list, cannot be treated as tax deductible cost. Obligation to settle your expenses with use of bank accounts mentioned in the white lists is applicable to transactions exceeding value of PLN 15 000.

Additionally, payments made to accounts not included in the lists will result in joint liability for VAT obligations of the supplier - in the amount equal to the VAT proportionally attributable to the transaction.

Above sanctions will not apply if the taxpayer notifies the head of the tax office about the payment made to an account other than the one included in the list - within three days from the date of the payment being ordered.  

What does it mean?

To avoid sanctions, the white list should be integrated with taxpayers' payment system and settlement procedures. Applying new rules may require intensified internal controls and possibly, introduction of additional verification of counterparties.

From a tax perspective, two aspects are key:

• verify, before executing a payment (i.e. on the day of the transfer order) that payment will be made to bank account included in the list; and
• once payments are executed, verify retrospectively whether payments were made to bank accounts included in the list; in order to be able to notify the head of respective tax office about any potential errors within 3 days from the transfer order date, retrospective verification should be made as soon as practical (delayed actions may result in sanctions).

Above steps should help with minimizing risk of sanctions being imposed as a result of payment errors.

When planning works related to the introduction of the white list, it is worth to keep in mind upcoming changes concerning mandatory split payment mechanism. Since the split payment mechanism also affects payment processes, it will be more effective to introduce both changes simultaneously.