Poland to add penalties on late reverse charge reporting

In most countries, where a reverse charge purchase is reported late, the output VAT is compensated with the input VAT, hence no late payment arises and no penalties are charged for the late reporting of these transactions.


 

Poland is planning to introduce stricter rules on the reporting of purchases performed under reverse charge mechanism, including penalties when these transactions are not reported on time.

Reverse charge reporting

In some jurisdictions, however, the output VAT requires a corrective return in the period when the tax point occurred and the input VAT is only allowed to be deducted in the period when the invoice was received. Hence creating a late payment of VAT on the output side of the reverse charged purchase. Poland has recently announced the implementation of these rules as from 1 January 2017. The type of transactions subject to the new rules includes intra-Community acquisitions of goods, purchases of services from a foreign supplier by a Polish established customer or purchases of goods under the Polish domestic reverse charge mechanism.

Example
If you are filing monthly VAT returns and you make an intra-Community acquisition in January 2017 but the invoice is only received on 26 May 2017, this purchase needs to be corrected by submitting a corrective return for January 2017, where the output VAT of the intra-Community acquisition is reported. This corrective return will require a late payment and hence penalties will apply. Regarding the input VAT of this reverse charged purchase, it will only be allowed to be reported in the May 2017 VAT return.

The viability of reverse charge rules change

This month the AG of the ECJ gave an opinion about Hungarian reporting rules similar to those planned in Poland. The AG considered these type of VAT reporting rules abusive for the taxpayer and contravening the principle of neutrality and the principle of proportionality set in the EU rules. Therefore, we may expect the final ECJ decision to impact the outcome of the Polish plans on reverse charge reporting.

 


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