Tax authorities dream of absolute power

Recent actions of the Ministry of Finance suggest that officials had read a lot about ancient tyrannies. This seems to have inspired their new approach to taxpayers – President of Employers of Poland Andrzej Malinowski writes in “Rzeczpospolita”.

– Tyrants used to take the sons of defeated monarchs of neighboring countries hostage as an insurance against attempts to regain independence – he explains.

Malinowski argues that a similar approach is now being used with regards to the requirements to report the so-called “tax schemes”, where companies are obliged to inform the tax authorities on any case where lower tax rates were applied, but with no deadline for a decision on whether a particular application of a lower tax rate is justified.