Customs and Tax Compliance Checks

Customs and tax compliance checks are to fight tax and customs crimes that undermine the state’s financial security. The entities authorized to carry out customs and tax compliance checks are customs and tax offices. Compliance checks proceedings are carried out by National Fiscal Administration (KAS) and Customs and Tax Service officers.

The aim of a customs and tax compliance check is to determine whether tax, customs, and foreign exchange law provisions as well as regulations concerning setting and providing gambling services and owning gambling machines are being complied with. This may also include e.g. the type of fuel in a delivery vehicle’s tank, road transport on terms stipulated in separate provisions, and mail services.

Compliance checks are focused on fighting the most serious crimes breaching the financial security of the country, e.g. VAT frauds. Entrepreneurs gathering insignificant revenue may also be subject to verification. The regulations regarding customs and tax compliance checks do not have restrictions with regard to this issue. Everyone who is under obligation to comply with legal provisions in the aforementioned scope may be controlled.

There are 16 customs and tax offices – one per every voivodship. Each office is authorized to carry out compliance checks regardless of the seat of the controlled entity in the entire territory of Poland.

Compliance check processes may be carried out in a customs and tax office as well as the registered office of the controlled entity, the place where their tax books are kept or in any other place connected with their activity. Operations at the residential address or the places where equipment, goods or documents concerning the equipment, goods or operations subject to compliance check may be located are permitted.

Customs and tax compliance checks, unlike tax inspections initiated by tax offices, are not pre-announced. The taxpayer is not informed about the intention to initiate them with at least one week’s notice. The check starts at the moment the authorization to carry it out is delivered to the taxpayer, and if the controlled entity is a legal person or an entity without legal personality, to a board member, shareholder or other person authorized to represent or run the controlled person’s affairs. If the compliance check concerns the premises of a foreign entity, the authorization is handed to the person who actually manages, supervises or represents operations carried out in the territory of Poland.

There is also a possibility to initiate a customs and tax compliance check on the basis of a professional identification card. Such actions are seen as permitted if there is a suspicion that legal provisions are not being complied with and the circumstances actually justify the immediate launch of a customs and tax compliance check. However, authorization must be delivered no later than within 3 business days.

The controllers may request documents related to the subject of the compliance check. They have the right to request files, books, and other documents related to the compliance check, also for the period that is different from the controlled period if the deadline for keeping them has not expired yet. The controllers may verify documentation, question witnesses, carry out cross-checks, call a specialist witness, search offices, carry out visual examinations, etc.

The ability to search apartments, even if the taxpayer does not carry out business operations there, to find evidence that may be important to the case, sparks much doubt and controversy. The search may be carried out using technical equipment and professional dogs. Apartment search requires obtaining prior consent from the competent district prosecutor. However, conducting it without consent is permitted in matters of pressing concern, where there is reasonable concern that evidence is present within the premises. Such search must be later approved by the prosecutor, otherwise the collected material and information cannot be admitted as evidence – not only in a customs and tax compliance check but also in tax compliance check and tax, customs or penal and fiscal proceedings.

You may not complain about the results of a customs and tax compliance check. Once the controlling proceedings are over, a report on the check is drafted, including information on the discovered inconsistencies or their lack. The taxpayer owns the right to submit corrections of tax returns within 14 days of receiving it. If, despite the discovered inconsistencies, the corrections are not submitted or not accepted by the authorities, the customs and tax compliance check morphs into tax procedure.