Poland launches B2B e-invoice consultation

Poland last week issued a public consultation on imposing mandatory electronic B2B invoicing by 2023 to help reduce VAT fraud. Initially, there will be a voluntary phase from October 2021. Taxpayers will be incentivised to adopt the new regime with speedy VAT credit repayments of 40 days and no requirement to submit SAF-T (JPK_FA) files. The consultation will last until 23 February 2021.

To introduce compulsory e-invoicing, Poland will have to seek permission from the European Commission to deviate from the EU VAT Directive. The requires taxpayers to provide paper-based invoices unless they receive written consent from customers to provide controlled e-invoices.

2023 e-invoice plans

At the end of last year, Poland updated its plans for mandating electronic VAT invoice to 2023. It was previously planned for 2022. This will include live submission of e-invoices to the National System of e-invoices for authorisation (KSeF, Krajowy System e-Faktur) to enable the authorities to monitor tax and economic activity, and attempt to identify VAT fraud - especially carousel fraud.

Under the proposed system, taxpayers will prepare invoices in their own ERP systems and send them via an API to the KSeF. In the KSeF, each invoice will be timestamped and assigned a number. For small businesses, there will also be a possibility to issue invoices in a government portal (eMikrofirma). As long as the use of the new system is voluntary, the supplier and the customer will have to agree on issuing and receiving e-invoices according to the new requirements.

E-invoicing would eventually replace the existing SAF-T (JPK-J) monthly reporting, which itself is replaced the Polish VAT return on 1 October 2020. It will model itself on the successful Italian SdI pre-clearance model.

Poland is following Spain, Portugal, Italy and Hungary in introducing live invoice reporting. This will build on the rollout of B2G e-invoice programs following the EU lead. This is based around a central government clearing platform for submitting and forwarding invoices to governmental customers.

Poland will be reaching out to other EU member states to collaborate on sharing platforms and cross-border VAT data. 

Poland has been very successful at reducing its VAT Gap, the measure between expected and actual VAT receipts. Much of this is attributed to anti-fraud measures such as online cash registers for report shop sales and comparing to subsequent VAT returns and payments. VAT cash registers are being rolled out to a further range of shops over the next six months.