Transfer pricing documentation is among the most important tax files to be maintained by member companies of domestic and multinational corporate groups if their related-party transactions exceed a certain threshold.

Professionally-prepared documentation which is accurate and includes all parts required by corporate and personal income tax acts will not only help you avoid surcharge payments (50% tax rate) but, first and foremost, can be used in your discussions and negotiations with tax authorities concerning inter-company transactions.

We specialise in the preparation of the ?local file? component of transfer pricing documentation for both domestic and multinational entities. Over the years, with hundreds of tax documentation files prepared annually, we have gained extensive experience and expertise in that regard.

Based on your feedback, we are offering training courses on tax matters of your choice. Our internal tax workshops will complement and expand your knowledge of whatever tax areas you might be interested in or come across in your company on a daily basis.

One benefit of our workshops is that they are always bespoke and tailored to the specific affairs of your business. Their strength also lies in how they are conducted: any topic is open for discussion and you can ask questions, provide comments or share your views and opinions.

Some of the areas we address during our workshops are:
1. Latest development in taxes
2. Planned changes in taxation
3. Problem areas, reviews of private tax rulings and court decisions
4. Company cars
5. Free employee benefits (non-wage compensation)
6. Sales-supporting measures (promotion, marketing, advertising)
7. VAT compliance in chain or triangular transactions
8. Taxation of partnerships
9. Transfer prices. Transfer pricing documentation
10. Domestic and foreign business travel: problem areas
11. The ABC of taxes for non-financial staff in sales, procurement and marketing
12. Tax consequences of different business financing arrangements
13. Tax audits and customs inspections
14. Other

Recently, we have seen tax authorities ramping up their tax audit efforts. The authorities are particularly interested in VAT refunds, transfer pricing arrangements and withholding taxes.Based on our experience, the key is to properly prepare for a tax audit and discussions with fiscal authorities. This makes a tax audit a much shorter affair and allows you to avoid adverse tax rulings or decisions by the authorities.

We have years of experience handling tax audits and can support your in the entire process to make sure your audit is substantively and procedurally sound and produces a satisfactory outcome in fiscal terms.

We also write briefs in tax appeal cases, including before Provincial Administrative Courts and the Supreme Administrative Court.

We take pride in our ability to provide ongoing support across all tax issues that businesses or individuals come across on a daily basis. We offer concise tax advice by phone or in face-to-face meetings or prepare comprehensive tax opinions, reports, presentations, tax compliance manuals, etc.

Our fee in such a case is based on an hourly rate and a contractually agreed number of hours a month during which we are available for a client (fixed fee with capped hours).

A compendium of sorts, a tax compliance manual covers all things fiscal in a single document for use by your finance and accounting staff. Apart from complementing and shoring up your tax expertise, a tax compliance manual will establish a standard compliance process to help you handle some of your recurrent activities.

A tax compliance manual is unique in that it will only address processes specific to your business. This will come in handy in firms with large finance and accounting functions or high employee turnover rates but also those with strict functional specialization where individual employees only handle specific matters, such as business travel or exports. In those use cases, a tax compliance manual will offer a specific pattern to be followed, keeping your tax and accounting records in order and reducing the risk of error.

Depending on your needs, a tax compliance manual will come with a list all tax compliance procedures for:
1. all of your business operations;
2. selected areas of your business operations (service procurement, sales of goods, CAPEX, etc.); or
3. selected types of transactions in your business (intra-Community supplies or acquisitions of goods, exports or imports of services).

Before preparing a tax compliance manual, we will need to take a detailed look at your records to analyse your tax compliance so far. Your manual will factor in what is unique about your business, any contracts or agreements you made, or any invoices or other accounting records you have. As such, this will not be another theoretical treatise but a practical guide of value to both your tax and accounting staff and your Management Board.

Each and every business transaction will be addressed from A to Z from the moment an invoice arrives in your office until it is posted in your books and then accounted for in respect of all taxes (VAT, PIT, CIT).

Each subject in the manual will also be discussed in terms of its handling by the tax authorities.

The key benefit of a tax compliance manual is that it eradicates taxpayers? fundamental (systemic) errors in their compliance processes. Once it gets your stamp of approval, a tax compliance manual will be a must-read for all of your finance and accounting staff.

A tax review is one of the most effective tools of a tax consultant, one that can deliver real financial benefits.

Its effectiveness is premised on a comprehensive analysis of a firm’s tax compliance arrangements, undertaken by an independent tax advisor with years of professional experience.

A tax review can help uncover issues that may have slipped under the radar in ongoing tax compliance, including in day-to-day support. Such issues can only be identified by taking a cross-section look at a firm, starting with the kind of business it does through to its organisational arrangements and internal policies.

The main functions of a tax review are:
– To identify potential tax risks and, in collaboration with a tax advisor, to find the ways of eliminating or mitigating them; and
– To uncover any untapped opportunities for tax optimisation;
– A tax review may cover any period (monthly, quarterly, yearly, multi-annual).

Depending on your needs, a tax review may cover your entire tax system or just a selection of its processes or key transactions.

Following a tax review, a report will be prepared that includes guidance on further actions.

Compared to tax reviews done as part of financial audits, the leverage we provide is that:
1. our review is handled by tax advisors with years of consulting experience under their belt;
2. materiality thresholds and sample sizes are determined for each transaction individually;
3. our risk assessment and tax optimisation processes are informed by the latest commentary in professional press, private tax rulings from the Polish Ministry of Finance, and judicial decisions of the Provincial Administrative Court, Supreme Administrative Court, and the European Court of Justice

You might be planning a restructure such as a merger, spin-off, takeover or acquisition of a business (or a part of it). Before you decide to go ahead, it might be a good idea to perform due diligence on your target to help you evaluate its financial or tax position.

All restructuring processes entail what is called legal and tax succession, which might be universal or partial depending on the type of merger. This means that, by operation of law, your acquisition will result in the assignment to your company of all rights and liabilities of the target entity, including its taxes.

Due diligence involves analysis and evaluation of the target’s position. Most importantly, it helps you identify any potential risks of your planned restructure.

Most often, due diligence is used to evaluate the profitability of the target business. If done conscientiously, tax due diligence will provide a precise picture of the restructured entity by:
1. identifying its tax arrangements;
2. identifying its tax risks;
3. uncovering its tax opportunities (savings).

Also, due diligence will help you understand the tax implications of your restructure.

Buying your supplies abroad does not mean you are bound to lose VAT charged on your purchases. Procedural arrangements in EU member states allow you as a taxable person to reclaim your VAT by filing a specific application form.We can help you write your refund application for the VAT you paid abroad and will prepare and translate relevant letters to foreign tax authorities.

In their competition for employee talent, businesses are increasingly offering their staff a whole range of attractive fringe benefits. Employers try to outdo each other devising novel benefits, from the most common Multisport or medical insurance packages through to the more elaborate perks, such as workplace massages or provision of space for foreign language learning.

Obviously, tax authorities can see the changing labour market, too. They seek taxation opportunities in employees’ fringe benefits, viewing most non-wage compensation as taxable income of the employees concerned.

We can offer you a detailed examination of all employee benefits in your company to identify those that must be taxed and those that could be optimized for tax efficiency without risking a dispute with tax authorities.

How a business chooses to go about its projects can be a make-or-break factor for it, affecting its financial standing for years. Any investment plan must include a tax impact assessment.

Our services here include comprehensive tax consultations at project planning and delivery stages, and an analysis of selected project issues. In particular:

1. We will identify potential areas of measurable tax savings, taking account of available capital allowances and financing methods;
2. We will help you select and implement a tax efficient method of investment.

Entertainment, advertising and promotional activities (bonus-based sales, cash bonuses, sponsoring, competitions, loyalty programmes, participation in trade shows, entertainment events for customers, dinners with clients, catering, etc.) are part and parcel of any business that wants to grow and improve its bottom line. Building up your business image requires not only a well-thought-out marketing strategy but also efficient expenditure planning and proper tax compliance.

Yet, promotion, entertainment and advertising are among the most controversial tax issues. The ever-changing guidelines from tax authorities do not help the taxpayers in their decisions, either. A couple of examples:
– The crucial issue for CIT purposes is eligibility of expenses for deduction.
– The most controversial issue in PIT is whether income earned by addressees of promotion measures is tax-exempt.
– With VAT, there is a problematic issue of taxation of supplies and services provided free of charge or partially in return for payment, and of deductibility of VAT charged in connection with those measures.

We can examine your entertainment, advertising and promotional expenses to see if they are properly classified for tax purposes, and identify any related risks and ways to remove them. We will also show you how to optimise your tax bill in respect of those measures to generate substantial tax savings in the process.

Doing business with multinationals established abroad will often require you to deduct a Polish withholding tax on the income you pay to your foreign suppliers of services.

Polish CIT and PIT regulations are so broad that virtually any payment to a foreign business should be considered in terms of withholding tax requirements. Importantly, failure to do so might leave the Polish company open to liability for defaulting on its duty as withholding agent, so that more often than not it will need to pay the amount of tax out of its own pocket.

We can help you work out whether your payments to foreign partners should be taxed at source. We will also advise you on how the withholding tax could be reduced under relevant double taxation treaties.

A lot of existing tax regulations create confusion about their meaning. To have clarity on your specific arrangement, you will often need to apply to the Head of National Revenue Information Service for a private tax ruling.

Our experience is that obtaining a favourable tax ruling will require the applying taxpayer to build a strong case. This means addressing the controversial regulations and how they are interpreted and discussing Polish private tax rulings and administrative case law, CJEU case law, and published opinions of subject-matter experts.

A solid case will considerably improve the taxpayer’s odds of obtaining a satisfying ruling.

We can prepare your application for a private tax ruling. Before filing it, we will first examine the substance of the issue concerned and come up with an initial assessment of your chances for a positive outcome. We will also help you decide whether applying for a tax ruling in your specific situation is appropriate and can give you the best results.

Our services also include representing applicants before the issuing authority and, if it comes to that, before administrative courts.

If you are unsure as to what type of business would be the best one for you in financial and tax terms, we will analyse all the pros and cons of any form of business organisation and identify their tax implications, including liability and future burden-sharing arrangements for shareholders or partners. To make sure you have a clear picture of what each organisational form implies for you, we will prepare our comprehensive tax opinion and provide you with a table summing up the salient information about them and numerical simulations. These inputs will help you decide on a future business arrangement that will be best suited to your needs, including in terms of tax.

A crucial aspect of a restructure is to examine its tax implications, which includes identification of any risks that may be involved in tax savings. As of 15 July 2016, Polish tax laws include a provision the aim of which is to prevent their circumvention. The Polish tax authorities can now challenge virtually any transaction which gives rise to tax savings of more than PLN 100,000. Usually, such savings are generated in mergers, acquisitions or transformations.

Our task would be to make you aware of any tax implications of your restructure, including the related tax savings. Most importantly, though, we would alert you to any tax risks that are inherent in it.

Navigating the maze of tax regulations can lead anyone wishing to register for Polish VAT astray. Due to a language barrier, the process is especially difficult for foreign businesses.

We will help you register as a Polish taxable person, showing you the documents you will need for this and contacting relevant tax authorities on your behalf to make the registration process as quick as possible.