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Counteracting grey area in Poland. Evolution of limiting actions and mechanisms

grey area tax gap VAT tax due diligence Standard Audit FileTax – SAF-T National System of e-invoices (KSeF) Central Register of Invoices mechanism of split payment reverse charge mechanism open source of information

The existence of grey area in the world’s economy is a very common phenomenon. Range and area of its existence are depended on many factors that have been analysed and described in subject literature. Grey area represents huge share in GDP of each country and causes significant damage for state finances and untaxed income that appeared within grey area enlarge tax gap, in particular VAT tax. Effectiveness of actions taken in order to minimise grey area and counteracting violation of tax law is supported by many e-services that are supposed to: create friendly environment for the performance of tax and customs obligations – for entrepreneurs and tax administration – effective collection of public tribute- increasing income and sealing tax system. System actions that are supposed to seal a tax system are to introduce innovative IT solutions. A tool that should support detecting irregularities will be an electronic Central Register of Invoices (at present National System of e-invoices). It is a repository of data where all the invoices will be stored. It will allow control authorities to easily detect the irregularities and to take preventive measures. Currently there is Standard Audit File that includes settlement of VAT tax and has also informative function about documents and tax books of taxpayers. All the actions that support tax administration in terms of limiting grey area are supported by other solutions such as: monitoring and control of cash flow in the area of settlements between entrepreneurs. Here we should mention lowering the limit of cash payments in settling liabilities from the transactions and introducing a Tele-information System of Clearing House (STIR). Grey area is identified as an activity of economic character with high risk e.g. unconscious participation in tax frauds. The risk of starting a business activity can be partially limited by using information included in public registers such as National Register of Court (KRS), Central Register and Information on Economic Activity (CEIDG) or REGON register. In the monography a sample list of foreign public database which can be used to verify the contractors is presented. It will allow to avoid allegation of failure of due diligence and conscious participation in tax fraud. Among proposed open data registers the following were indicated as available on-line: The Open Database of The Corporate World (opencorporates.com), European portal „e-Sprawiedliwość” (e-justice.europa.eu), national economic registers and sample commercial database.

doi:10.34616/142667 ISBN 978-83-66601-71-0 (druk) ISBN 978-83-66601-72-7 (online)

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