Verification of contractors
December 11, 2017
The policy of the Ministry of Finance, focused on an intense fight against tax fraud, means more detailed control procedures for entrepreneurs. Tax authorities may challenge transactions made by honest taxpayers with unreliable parties if they find that they are not exercising due diligence when verifying a counterparty. Entrepreneurs, on the other hand, point out that in order to exercise due diligence, the tools necessary to check and recognize whether the contractor is reliable or not are necessary. New opportunities in this area are introduced by the Act of 27 October 2017 amending the Tax Ordinance Act, which the President signed on November 24, 2017.
This is very beneficial for people who deal with entities, i.e. contractors. Each of us will be able to turn to the tax office in order to verify his contractor. First of all, the information will be reliable and will be provided directly to the person concerned.
The verifier will be able to apply to the Office for verification of the company’s bank account number, submission of declarations and other documents by the taxpayer and obligations that the taxpayer has towards the Office. The interested party will also be able to ask the Office for verification that the contractor has entered the invoice in the VAT return and whether the declaration was submitted on time.
The cost of the certificate issued by the tax authority regarding a taxpayer conducting business activity is PLN 17.
The authorization concerns obtaining a certificate regarding entities with which the entrepreneur is already cooperating. However, this does not include companies with which the entrepreneur will cooperate. It also means the need to carry out control and verification in a continuous manner, if cooperation is planned for a longer period. At the same time, each verification will allow the taxpayer to obtain all information enabling cooperation with the contractor to the appropriate scope without the risk of cooperation with an unreliable contractor and undermining the right to deduct input tax by the tax authority. The entrepreneur will show due diligence regarding the verification of the contractor, but it is not always possible to avoid the negative consequences resulting from the contractor’s dishonesty.
