Przemysław POWIERZA
tax advisor, Tax Partner at RSM Poland
Head of German Desk

The job of a tax advisor is to keep tax issues from overwhelming a business. Therefore, hand in hand with our Client, we struggle to come up with such schemes of company’s functioning which would earn the name “business first”. All analyses (including those for controlling purposes) as much as accountancy and tax settlements should be optimized, yet kept in the background. Nobody runs a business in order to be able to prepare financial statements or to pay taxes. These are, in fact, merely some unfortunate consequences of a successful business.

Companies are willing to simplify all internal processes and to minimize any related costs. It also applies to accountancy and tax settlements. However, some of our German-speaking Clients have gone way too far with assuming that bookkeeping and tax settlements in both Germany and Poland are to be, if not identical, then at least very much alike. This is a serious mistake. Ongoing debates on common consolidated income tax base tell a whole lot about possible differences between specific details of balance sheet law and tax law throughout EU. It is enough to consult VAT directives to find out that their provisions have strayed far from the standards of the Member States. And still, VAT is said to be the most harmonized...

Currently the greatest challenge for tax advisors is to make their Clients realize how far they can go, without harming their businesses, with the centralizing processes related to accountancy and taxes. This is an issue which has become of great importance in consulting services, especially at the onset of cooperation between a German-speaking Client and a tax advisor in Poland.