‘The payment of the conditional financial bonus for obtaining of certain sales volume and/or for due and timely payments is a discount in the meaning of the Article 29 sec. 4 of the Polish VAT Act, which reduces the tax base.’
Pursuant to § 13 sec. 1 of the Regulation of the Ministry of Finance a taxpayer, who grants a discount is obliged to issue a correcting invoice, if the discounts mentioned in the Article 29 sec. 4 of the Polish VAT Act have been granted after the issuing of the VAT sale invoice.
It seems that the above resolution ends the long discussion about the form of tax evidence of the bonuses. The practice was ambiguous; the bonuses were evidenced by the distributors in the form of the VAT sale invoices or in the form of accounting notes or were evidenced by the seller in the form of the correcting invoices. Unfortunately, the tax authorities and the administrative courts had unclear approach to this question and each form was accepted, depending on local practice. Both forms of bonus evidence by the distributor turned out to be not applicable, because the bonuses are in fact neither receivables for the sale of the goods or services by the distributor (therefore the issuing of the sale VAT invoices is incorrect), nor not-taxed receivables of the distributor (therefore the issuing of the accounting notes is incorrect). The Polish General Administrative Court came to the conclusion that the proper form of evidencing the bonuses is issuing the correcting VAT invoices by the seller.
Olga Sztejnert-Roszak , IDI agency & distribution country expert for Poland.
