Effectiveness of fiscal audits remains extremely low
23:20
Puls Biznesu daily decided to check the real effectiveness of fiscal controls, i.e. how much money the state actually charges towards the detected tax depletions. It turns out that, on average, less than 10 percent.
A few years ago, the results of tax inspections were breaking records. The Ministry of Finance (MF) informed about detecting irregularities with an average value of several billion zlotys a year, and even higher (e.g. in 2016 – PLN 21.6 billion). Decisions on surcharges, however, do not mean that so much money goes to the state treasury. The data obtained by the Puls Biznesu from the MF show that the total amount of real payments each year oscillated around ... PLN 1 billion. However, these amounts also included the so-called voluntary corrections of tax declarations (tax surcharge in the event of a mistake), which amount to a total of several hundred million zlotys each year. This means that the effectiveness of tax inspections in collecting outstanding taxes is very low. For example, in 2016, voluntary corrections of declarations were submitted for PLN 479 million, so as a result of surcharges as a result of tax inspections (findings at PLN 21.6 billion), only about PLN 600 million was paid, i.e. the effectiveness of enforcement amounted to 2.7 percent. In the following years, the indicator increased slightly, but just because the total value of detected tax depletions decreased. Last year it was around 11 percent.
Experts point out that the poor effectiveness of the enforcement of overdue taxes is the fault not only of the Polish tax authorities.
"Unfortunately, the effectiveness of all enforcement actions of the state in the field of taxes has never exceeded 1 percent of tax revenues. It was like this in the past and it is so now. This is a great weakness not only of the Polish tax office but also of tax authorities in many other European countries," prof. Witold Modzelewski, the former deputy finance minister, said.
Witold Modzelewski pointed out that the state puts emphasis mainly on blocking VAT refunds for those who try to extort the tax. In the opinion of many experts, however, such a practice has become a pathological routine of the tax office, which makes honest entrepreneurs suffer.
