Poland: Krajowy System e-Faktur moves to next phase of legislative process

Progress has been made in the roll-out of the Polish CTC (continuous transaction control) system, Krajowy System of e-Faktur. Earlier this year, the Ministry of Finance published a draft act, which is still awaiting adoption by parliament to become law. Draft e-invoice specifications have been released and there has been a public consultation on the CTC system.

In June, the Ministry of Finance announced it had reviewed all comments submitted by the public and Polish ministers on the CTC system and decided to take the following actions:

• Make the CTC system available for testing in October 2021 to prepare for the go-live date in 2022.The pilot will be available for all taxpayers.
• Adopt and publish legislation in October 2021.
• Make available two e-invoice schemas, one in Polish and one in English.
• Roll-out the CTC system on a voluntary basis in January 2022, after 3 months of testing (October – December 2021).
• Make the CTC system mandatory in 2023.

In the announcement, the Minister outlined the benefits of adopting the CTC system for taxpayers. These include: quicker VAT refunds; security of the stored invoice in the tax authority’s database until the end of the mandatory storage period; certainty about the invoice delivery to the recipient through the CTC platform and therefore quicker invoice payments; automation of the invoice processing and exchange due to the adoption of a standardized e-invoice format.

In addition, as a result of the new e-invoicing rules upcoming changes in the SLIM VAT 2 package will trigger further relief measures, e.g. around the handling of duplicates and corrective invoices.

The Polish authorities are making good progress in the implementation of the Krajowy System e-Faktur. It is positive to see that the public consultation has proven useful in defining next steps and the authorities’ intent for transparency and timely documentation will hopefully continue throughout the entire CTC roll-out.