There will be a new tax. The Ministry of Finance is already working, the government will take care of the project

The draft act on equalization taxation of entities belonging to international and domestic groups is to be adopted by the government in the third quarter of 2024 – . It will introduce into Polish law the provisions of the 2022 Council Directive of the European Union, the aim of which is to implement global rules for counteracting the erosion of the tax base in the EU.

The government is preparing a global minimum tax system. We know the details

As noted in the list, the answer to the problems of international taxation is to introduce a system of the so-called global minimum tax. As part of this solution, the largest international enterprises will be checked every year whether they meet the requirement of the minimum effective level of taxation (15%). “If the effective level of income taxation for a given international group, in a specific jurisdiction, is below 15%, an appropriate equalization tax will be imposed on such a group,” we read. The global minimum tax system is to be based on three types of equalization tax:

• global equalization tax – in the directive as a principle of including income in taxation,
• national equalization tax – depending on the context, also with the attribute “qualified”,
• tax on under-taxed profits – in the directive as the principle of under-taxed profits.

What taxes is Donald Tusk’s government preparing?

The global equalization tax imposes the obligation to pay the appropriate equalization tax, in principle, on the ultimate parent entity in the group. In principle, this system is similar to the taxation regime for controlled foreign entities operating in many countries, including Poland. The group’s parent company, in the jurisdiction in which it is established, should pay top-up tax on its low-taxed subsidiaries in other jurisdictions.

The national equalization tax works similarly to the global equalization tax, with the difference that the right to collect the equalization tax remains in the country where the low-taxed component units of the group are located. Most often, tax will be paid in the jurisdiction where the low-taxed income is located (and not necessarily where the parent company is). The global and national equalization tax was extended in the directive to cover large national groups, i.e. groups of entities operating in only one Member State.

In turn, tax on under-taxed profits will be paid from the parent company to group entities located in a given jurisdiction when the parent company operates in another jurisdiction where there is no global equalization tax.