On 01 December 2022, a draft bill amending the Value-Added Tax Act and certain other acts was published on the Government Legislation Centre’s website. Under the bill, e-invoicing is to become mandatory in Poland starting from 01 January 2024.
Mandatory e-invoicing is to cover all the activities subject to domestic VAT, including:
- domestic supplies of goods and provisions of services between companies (B2B),
- supplies and provisions to public authorities (B2G),
- supplies and provisions to consumers (B2C). In this case, the principle that the invoice is issued at the buyer’s/service recipient’s request made within 3 months from the end of the month in which the given activity was performed is to remain unchanged.
The obligation to issue e-invoices via National e-Invoicing System will be imposed on taxpayers performing activities subject to the invoicing obligation under Polish VAT regulations, having their seat or fixed base in the territory of Poland. It will also cover taxpayers under subjective tax exemption (small businesses).
Mandatory e-invoicing will exclude taxpayers applying special schemes, such as non-Union scheme for certain services, special scheme on occasional international road carriage of passengers, and special scheme for distance sales of goods imported from third territories or third countries. This means that only the taxpayers registered for OSS/IOSS purposes in Poland will be obliged to comply with Polish invoicing regulations. Consequently, taxpayers registered under OSS/IOSS in another Member State will be exempt from this obligation.
In principle, using NeIS will be optional for other taxpayers. Importantly, the new system can be also applied to issue VAT RR invoices.
The National e-Invoicing System will be compatible with the e-Invoicing Platform (eIP).
It is expected that from 2025 the possibility of issuing invoices using cash registers will cease to be available. Moreover, cash register receipts bearing the buyer’s tax identification number (NIP) up to PLN 450 will no longer be treated as invoices. Instead, using NeIS will become mandatory.
Just as in the case of optional use of the NeIS scheme, invoices will be stored in the system for a period of 10 years, counting from the end of the year in which they were issued.
Access to detailed data from structured invoices will be possible in strictly defined circumstances - i.e., in the course of control and verification activities, during tax proceedings and for the purpose of conducting analytical, forecasting and research activities regarding tasks remaining within the jurisdiction of the National Revenue Administration (NRA).
Importantly, the bill brings amendments to the register of taxpayers (White List). The list of entities kept electronically by the Head of the National Revenue Administration is to additionally include information on whether given taxpayer is obliged to issue invoices via National e-Invoicing System.
Pursuant to the bill, users of e-Invoices will enjoy a reduced standard VAT refund period, i.e., 40 instead of 60 days.
Moreover, the System can be used to issue invoices correcting both e-invoices issued via NeIS and those provided outside it.
According to the bill, each e-invoice made available to the contractor outside NeIS e.g., a preview in .pdf format, will have to bear a verification code.
Additionally, under the new Article 106nh(1) of the VAT Act proposed by the bill, failure to meet the obligations set forth by the amended Act will be subject to a fine. The head of the tax office will be able to impose, by way of a decision, a fine on the taxpayer up to 100% of the amount of the tax indicated on the invoice, and in the case of an invoice without the indicated tax - a fine up to 18.7% of the total amount due indicated on the invoice. Moreover, a fine will also be due when:
- the taxpayer fails to issue an invoice via NeIS, which will be treated as failure to issue an invoice at all or
- the taxpayer issues an electronic invoice in the period of NeIS failure in a manner inconsistent with the template provided or
- the invoices issued in the period of NeIS failure are not uploaded to the System within a specified deadline.
The bill is expected to be passed by the Council of Ministers in Q1 2023.
At the same time, the Ministry of Finance launched public consultation on the new e-invoice structure template (FA(2)). The new template brings no division between Polish and foreign addresses and a reduced scope of provided address details. Moreover, the scope of data to be provided in the “BankAccount” node has also been modified. If the amendments come into force, each bank account (including Polish ones) will be provided in the IBAN format and the SWIFT code will be assigned to it.
Other changes include expansion of the Additional Description node with a field that will allow to associate it with the line number.
It should be noted that the proposed e-invoice template is to contain up to 1000 lines.
The bill is expected to be passed by the Council of Ministers in Q1 2023.
