Court: the tax office may block the account of any entrepreneur in Poland

The tax office may block a bank account, the so-called STIR to every entrepreneur – confirmed in the latest judgement of the Supreme Administrative Court.

Block the account of any entrepreneur

Compulsory blockades of bank accounts, the so-called STIR is often referred to as an atomic weapon in the hands of the treasury. The IT system of the clearing house allows you to track, using a specific algorithm, transactions aimed at tax fraud. Information about such transactions is transferred to the head of KAS, who may block the account of a suspicious company for 72 hours. And then extend the security for three months.

As Aleksander Tarek writes, anyone who runs a business, especially in an industry infected by fraudsters, must be aware that the tax office may, and sometimes must block his bank account.

Such a conclusion comes from the recent ruling of the Supreme Administrative Court in the case of an entrepreneur from the IT industry. As an entity with a high level of risk, it was selected, inter alia, due to the significant share of purchases from risky contractors. As a consequence, his accounts were blocked for 72 hours, and then extended for a maximum of three months. In total, just over 300,000 were blocked. zloty. The tax office decided that the IT specialist could consciously participate in VAT fraud from invoices that did not document real activities.

The IT specialist defended that he had been running the company for years in accordance with the regulations. According to him, the tax office did not show that it failed to be reliable when checking contractors, paid for services that were not provided or that it contributed to the reduction of VAT in any other way by documenting events that were not performed. Especially since there is no VAT arrears.

The taxpayer appealed against the extension of the blockade, but the Provincial Administrative Court in Warsaw did not find any breach of the provisions. He found that the tax office had grounds to apply both blockades. He did not have to prove the applicant’s involvement in the tax fraud, but only to make it plausible. The frauds themselves do not have to occur at the owner of the blocked account, but at earlier or later stages of invoicing. The tax office at STIR does not examine the taxpayer’s awareness or good faith.

Introduced STIR into the system

In his opinion, however, anyone running a business, especially in an industry infected by tax fraudsters, must be aware that the tax office may, and in certain situations must even use it. Of course, taking care of the financial security of the state and when the statutory conditions are met. Therefore, a cautious entrepreneur should take into account that the legislator introduced STIR into the system.

The NSA also did not find any abuse by the tax office ( file reference number I FSK 371/22 ). He noted that the STIR regulations gave the tax office a lot of freedom for the first and subsequent blockades.

Source: Rzeczpospolita