Anti-crisis shield contrary to EU rules

Predicating assistance upon where the given company pays it taxes will leave many entities without protection, and not every one can shift its tax residence to Poland.

Imagine that you run a business which has been left much the worse off by the coronavirus epidemic. You cannot operate on account of the counter-epidemic restrictions imposed by the state. You are the proverbial one day away from loss of liquidity, and seem to have no choice but to start laying off your people. A flicker of hope is held out in the form of the PLN 100 bln programme about to be unveiled by the Polish Development Fund; alas, not everybody can line up to receive grants for up to 75% of the project value or preferential loans. These goodies are barred to entities which pay taxes outside Poland or whose beneficial owner is a tax resident of another country. Theoretically, they can go ahead and partake of the scheme anyway, but only on the condition that they move their tax residence to Poland within 9 months.

“In practice, such a means of defining eligibility may exclude many large enterprises from seeking public aid under the new programme”, emphasises Katarzyna Lisowska, associate at GESSEL. (…)

The full text of this article is available (in Polish) in Dziennik Gazeta Prawna (17.04.2020 r.). If you are interested in an English-language version, please contact: kontakt@gessel.pl