The Ministry of Finance, two days, before introducing new rules of withholding tax, again, deferred its application. Pursuant to the published on June 28, 2019, Decree of the Ministry of Finance the provisions concerning new WHT regime being applied for payments exceeding 2m PLN, have been deferred until the January 1, 2020. By way of reminder, the new WHT regime was to be applied from July 1, 2019, inter alia, in the cases when payments constitute income from:
- Interest
- copyrights or related rights
- advisory, accounting, market studies, law, marketing, management and control of data processing, employees’ recruitment and the personnel sourcing services, guarantees and commitments services and payments on the basis of similar titles
- dividends and other revenues from participation in profits of legal persons.
Another Decree deferring new WHT regime has been issued lately, however it is not applicable to payments made to PIT taxpayers. The Decree of MF provides a postponement of WHT provisions only in respect to the CIT payers. Above indicates that, the payments which would be made after July 1, 2019 to PIT taxpayers are under the new WHT regime.
It is worth to mention that, from the January 1, 2019 in the scope of the payments made to the PIT and CIT taxpayers as well, the new definition of the beneficial owner comes into effect. An entity should be treated as a beneficial owner of payments when:
- receives the payment for its own benefit, being able to decide on its further use and bears the economic risk associated with the loss of the amounts received
- is not an intermediary, representative, trustee or other entity legally or actually obliged to transfer all or part of the receivables to another entity
- conducts a real economic activity in the country of residence – if the receivables are obtained in connection with the conducted business activity.
Moreover, all WHT tax remitter are obligated to verify with due diligence during the requirements for a lower tax rate, tax exemption or not withholding tax.
