After January 1, 2020, until the entry into force of the new provisions implementing Directive 2018/1910, the tax payer will be able to apply the directive or the national legislation, provided that he does so consistently in all aspects connected with the settlement of VAT on a given transition – thus informs the Ministry of Finance in a communication of December 23, 2019.

The primary role of Council Directive UE 2018/1019, implementing amendments concerning chain transactions, call-off stock warehouse procedures in cross-border trade and conditions for the 0% rate with the right of deduction on account of intra-Community supply of goods, is to unify and improve the current VAT system. The new regulations relate primarily to:

• Chain transactions – uniform rules for the determination of the so-called transported delivery, and therefore no need to analyse the terms of delivery each time in order to determine which delivery the transport should be assigned to;
• Call-off stock warehouse procedures – no need to register for VAT purposes in the Member State of arrival of goods (from the supplier’s point of view) or to settle the tax due in respect of intra-Community acquisition of goods (from the purchaser’s point of view);
• Conditions for application of the 0% rate with the right to deduct on account of intra-Community supply of goods – implementing the requirement for the tax payer to have a valid VAT number of the buyer of the goods and to submit a proper sales list as a substantive condition for the exemption;

The changes, as one can read in the explanatory memorandum to the draft amendment to the VAT Act implementing EU Council Directive 2018/1910 of December 4, 2018, will prevent double taxation or non-taxation, as well as increasing legal certainty, bringing the current legal situation into order and facilitating combating fraud in cross-border transactions on the territory of the EU.

Poland, as well as other EU Member States, was required to implement Directive 2018/1910 into its national legal systems by the end of 2019. Unfortunately, this was not possible in our country within the designated period, and the legislative work on the implementation of the Directive is still underway. This, however, does not mean that taxpayers cannot benefit from the facilitations and EU harmonization contained in the Directive at this stage. The contents of the communication posted on the website of the Ministry of Finance shows that the use by taxpayers of the provisions of Directive 2018/1910, instead of the provisions of the national VAT Act, is not only acceptable, but even recommended due to the fact that it might already have been implemented in other Member States .

Natalia Szymocha, Tax Consultant, ATA Tax Sp. z o.o.

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