Reverse charge transactions – tax point in Poland
Reverse charge in international transactions
Cross-border transactions settled under the reverse charge mechanism include:
- intra-community acquisition of goods (ICA) – on the purchase side,
- import of services – on the purchase side,
- export of services – on the sales side.
Reverse charge mechanism assumes that the buyer accounts for both the output and input VAT.
Have a question or need support?
Polish VAT rules provide detailed guidelines on (i) when to report transactions for VAT purposes, and (ii) how to calculate the tax base in PLN.
According to the regulations:
- for services: the tax point arises on the date the service is performed, not on the invoice issue date. For continuous services performed over settlement periods, the tax point is generally the last day of the settlement period. However, if payment is made before the service is performed or before the last day of the settlement period, the payment date determines the tax point,
- for ICA: the tax point is determined by the invoice date. The invoice must be issued by the 15th day of the month following the delivery month. If issued after this deadline, the tax point defaults to the 15th day of the month following the delivery month. Advance payments do not trigger a tax obligation for ICA, even if a downpayment invoice is issued.
Based on tax point date, conversion transaction amounts into PLN is made.
In Poland, every reverse charge transaction subject to Polish VAT is reported in the SAF-T file. Additionally, ICA and export of services are reported in the recapitulative statement (EC Sales and Acquisition List in a VAT-UE form).
Domestic reverse charge
Currently, there are no goods or services in Poland subject to the reverse charge mechanism for domestic transactions. This change took place with the introduction of the mandatory split payment mechanism (MPP) in November 2019. You can find more details about MPP in this article: https://crido.pl/en/blog-taxes/split-payment-mechanism/.
However, the domestic reverse charge may still apply in certain cases, particularly when specific conditions are met (generally, when the supplier is not registered for VAT in Poland, but the purchaser is).
Listen