Foreigners avoid paying taxes, construction tax-break exploited often

According to the Tax Office, foreigners in Poland, both individuals and corporations, often do not pay taxes. They either avoid paying taxes completely, leave the country, or look for every conceivable way to lower their taxes, for example by using the construction tax break. Certain foreign companies offer their services to Polish entities for about ten or eleven months a year and then "cease" operations in Poland, re-establishing their companies at the beginning of the next year. The Finance Ministry is taking steps aimed at limiting these activities and has ordered local tax offices to monitor construction companies. A good example of the scale of the problem is the First Tax Office in Katowice, where in the first nine months of this year 266 foreign entities generated income from dividends, but paid combined taxes of only zl. 5,7 million (Rzeczpospolita, Oct. 30, p. B1)