White list of VAT-registered taxpayers available as of 1 September

As of 1 September 2019 the website of the Ministry of Finance features a white list of VAT-registered taxpayers – HERE. It contains, among other things, company bank accounts notified to the Tax Office and allows verification of the status of your business partner. Until the end of 2019 it is to be a “test” project. From the beginning of January 2020, payment of any amount over PLN 15,000 by a business to another business that is not on the white list will be sanctioned by the inability to treat such payment as a tax-deductible expense. It may also expose you to joint and several liability with the seller for VAT (this is an issue of due care in counterparty verification).

Worth to remember

1. Currently the white list is not fully functional and it contains some errors – not all notified accounts are already in the database, some data is incorrect. However, companies already use it to verify their business partners, so you should check whether your organization is recorded correctly.

2. If a company issues invoices for amounts exceeding PLN 15,000, it has to hold a company bank account and make sure that it has been notified to the Tax Office. Your customer may already hesitate when making a bank transfer, and as of January 2020 they will most likely refuse to pay.

3. New accounting procedures must include:

– verification of counterparties that are VAT-registered taxpayers against the white list (as of January 2020, but we would suggest you start now to develop this new habit);

– attaching a printout from the white list from the website of the Ministry of Finance to each invoice over PLN 15,000.

Author:

Grzegorz Leśniewski, Attorney-at-Law