20 Years of Tax Relief? Poland Reworks Its Investment-Zone Rules

FTZ News: Poland’s special economic zones run out on Dec. 31. The cabinet on Tuesday backed a bill meant to keep the tax holidays going without those fences.

WP, working from a PAP dispatch filed before the meeting, said ministers would take up an amendment to the 2018 Act on Supporting New Investments, the statute behind the Polish Investment Zone. The Development and Technology Ministry later posted that the Council of Ministers had adopted the text. Parliament still has to pass it. Until it does, the current clocks apply.

The 1994 zone statute dies with the year. Offices that now stamp zone permits would lose their legal footing. So the bill invents an “area manager” inside the 2018 act and parks the paperwork there: take the file, change the decision, check the project.

What investors will read first is the 20-year decision. Relief today lasts 10, 12 or 15 years, depending on the map — shorter near Warsaw, longer in the east. A warehouse that takes five years to throw off profit often never uses the whole cap. The authors say a single 20-year term everywhere fixes that.

They also want an electronic desk, ePSI, for applications and the mail that follows. The same zone managers would still sign, at least in the version PAP fed to WP in the morning.

Tax inspectors get a look. The economy minister would have to ask the head of KAS, the revenue service, about how much income the exemption covers. Earlier drafts put that review on aid of 25 million zlotys and up. Tuesday’s ministry note skipped the number and said only that KAS would opine on the bits that set the tax-free slice.

Andrzej Domański, who holds finance and the economy, told the prime minister’s account the point was certainty and moving the process onto a screen.

The state’s tally from September 2018 through 2025: 3,700 decisions, 154.4 billion zlotys of promised spending, more than 55,500 jobs on paper. Small and midsize firms grabbed 2,372 of those decisions — 64 percent — but only 24 billion zlotys, about 16 percent of the money, and just over 10,100 jobs.

PSI already covers the country. Tuesday’s vote does not open a new park. It tries to stop a hole when the old districts close. The Sejm can still cut the 20 years or the KAS stop. Until the law is on the books, a file sitting in the inbox is judged under today’s rules./.