Polish tax authorities’ approach to TP adjustments: hope for change?

While conducting intragroup transactions, the application of transfer pricing adjustments is a common practice globally, especially among multinational groups. The guidelines published by OECD stress their main purpose, which is to appropriately remunerate individual entities based on their activities and the risks they incur, as well as to allocate costs to the entities that bear those risks.

Even though these practices are common on the international arena, in the past few years Polish courts disallowed the tax treatment of transfer pricing adjustments. In spite of new regulations from 2019, the tax authorities questioned the application of adjustment. This stance created an obstacle for many Polish companies, which are becoming increasingly active internationally and seek to benefit from the common practice.

In the new publication in International Tax Review Magdalena Marciniak and Agnieszka Krzyżaniak, partners at MDDP, explain the background of the newest signs of change:

“At the beginning of 2024, two new rulings were issued by the provincial administrative courts in Białystok and Poznań[1] that broke the negative line of interpretation that had persisted since 2019. The courts have finally indicated that transfer pricing adjustments made before 2019 may be recognised as tax-deductible costs. The courts consistently emphasised that the application of transfer pricing adjustments is directly related to the functioning of entities within capital groups and that such adjustments are crucial to ensuring the arm’s-length nature of settlements between related parties.

The courts found that, despite the absence of specific transfer pricing adjustment provisions before January 1 2019, it was possible to recognise costs related to these adjustments as tax-deductible costs. They noted that the application of transfer pricing adjustments is often a key condition for generating revenue, thereby fulfilling the cause-and-effect requirement for deductibility as indicated in Article 15(1) of the Polish CIT Act, which was in force before 2019”.

 

#MORE in International Tax Review >> https://www.internationaltaxreview.com/article/2ds0rlfmq0o9v3uvl8v0g/sponsored/polish-tax-authorities-approach-to-tp-adjustments-hope-for-change.

 

[1] I SA/Bk 13/24 and I SA/Po 721/23