Survival of the Richest

Poland
Harmful tax practices
According to a study on aggressive tax planning structures,
Poland has 11 indicators, compared to the EU average of
10.6. 667 Poland does not have a patent box or any other
active indicators.
Poland had 20 advance pricing agreements (or ‘sweetheart
deals’) in force at the end of 2015. This makes Poland the
country with the 12th highest number of advance pricing
agreements in the EU. 668
Global solutions
The previous Polish government stated that further analysis
was necesasry in order to determine whether Poland could
support the establishment of an intergovernmental UN body on
tax. 669 The new government has so far been quiet on the issue.
Conclusions
The Polish government remains opposed to public registers
of beneficial owners, which is of concern. On the issue
of transparency about where multinational corporations
do business and what they pay in taxes, the government
supports the European Commission’s proposal on partially
public country by country reporting.
The Polish tax treaty system is an issue of concern, in
particular since Poland has several ‘very restrictive’ tax
treaties, which impose strong limitations on the taxing
rights of the developing countries that sign them.
When it comes to harmful tax practices, Poland is not
among the worst, but still has a number of indicators of
structures which multinational corporations can use for
aggressive tax planning, as well as a significant number of
‘sweetheart deals’ with multinational corporations.
On the issue of whether to establish an intergovernmental
UN tax body, the Polish government has not given a position.
86 • Survival of the Richest