Finance Ministry abandons idea of all-in-one tax

On Wednesday, the government stated it will not pursue its goal of introducing an all-in-one tax, a statement from the Ministry of Economy said. The tax had been proposed by the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) government as a way to simplify the fiscal system and combine the premiums of PIT, ZUS and NFZ. Minister of Finance and Deputy Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki explained his assessment of the situation. "After consultation, tangible and comprehensive analysis "for" and "against," we decided that we [will] not introduce this solution to the Polish tax system,” he told the press. In November, the government had promised that by the end of 2016 they would take a final position on the so-called all-in-one tax. However, as Morawiecki said, after a multi-faceted discussion within the government, and after hearing the substantive arguments from a very wide range of social partners and businesses, we concluded that the continuation of work on such a solution is not well founded. The minister stressed that the way in which the tax would affect self-employed persons was critical in coming to the decision to stop its push for the new tax. "Analysis of the potential impact of the all-in-one tax for the self-employed contributed to the final decision,” he said. He added that there wasn't a plan to introduce a third tax threshold at this time. The ministry indicated that, since the work of entrepreneurs was associated with numerous risks and uncertainties, it couldn't be included in the same tax bracket as, for example, a contract of employment with a firm.