Companies existing in Poland can keep their accounts according to simplified principles based mainly on tax provisions, for instance, in the form of a tax revenue and cost register or in the form of full accounting, in compliance with the Accounting Act which stipulates that the units fulfilling, among other things, the following conditions have been compulsorily obligated to do so:
- units being commercial companies;
- units being natural persons, civil partnerships, registered partnerships or professional partnerships, provided that the net income from the sale of goods, products and financial operations for the previous accounting year amounted to a equivalent of at least EUR 800,000;
- units being organizational units operating on the basis of the Banking Law, provisions on trading in securities, provisions on investment funds, provisions on insurance activity or provisions concerning the organization and functioning of pension funds, irrespective of their level of income,
- units being foreign legal persons, foreign unincorporated units or foreign natural persons conducting business activity on the territory of the Republic of Poland personally or through an authorized person or through employees, irrespective of the level of income.
Account books are to be kept in the Polish language, in the Polish currency and they are to be conducted in the registered office of the unit. Account books may be kept on the territory of the Republic of Poland outside the registered office of the unit, however, in such a case, the head of the unit is obliged to do the following:
- notify the competent tax office of the place of keeping the books within 15 days from the day of releasing books outside the registered office of the unit;
- ensure the availability of account books for the inspection of empowered authorities of external control in the registered office of the unit.
Lately, due to management requirements and the reduction of costs of IT systems it has become popular to create one IT system for many companies of one capital group located in different countries.
Therefore, one may ask whether it is possible that the books of a Polish unit are kept abroad.
The Ministry of Finance, in its interpretation of legal provisions, stated that an IT system serving for keeping accounts with the use of a computer cannot be located outside the territory of Poland whereas there are no obstacles for electronically sending accounting data of the unit abroad for the purpose of separately processing the same with the use of a different IT system for the needs of a foreign unit.
Simultaneously, it is believed that if the data are transferred from computer data carriers, the recording of the data on these carriers counts as bookkeeping. Therefore, it should be acknowledged that only the transfer of the data outside the registered office of the company for the purpose of recording and processing the same outside the registered office is equivalent to keeping these books outside the registered office.
Therefore, if the company enters documents into the IT system in its registered office but they are processed on a server located abroad, the statutory requirements are considered fulfilled.
The Ministry of Finance approves this approach provided that the following requirements are fulfilled:
- there is documentation of the used IT system of accounting in the registered office;
- account books are made available in the registered office of the unit for inspection by empowered authorities of external control;
- the system of keeping accounts ensures clear links between book entries and accounting documents;
- data resulting from source documents are entered in the books in the registered office of the company.
In Poland, except for banks, no uniform system of a set of accounts to be used while making entries in the books has been established. Each unit has the right to specify any set in the manner facilitating the fulfillment of all statutory and reporting requirements.
Responsibility for the performance of obligations in the scope of accounting set forth by the act shall be borne by the head of the unit. Where the head of the unit is a multi-person authority and the person responsible has not been appointed, the responsibility shall be borne by all members of the said authority.
Keeping account books in a manner violating the provisions of the Accounting Act is liable to a fine or punishable by imprisonment for up to two years or by both these punishments jointly. In addition, in compliance with the provisions of the Polish penal fiscal code, faulty bookkeeping shall be subject to a fine. Another negative consequence of incorrect accounting can be the risk that, pursuant to the provisions of the Tax Law, improperly kept account books will not be acknowledged as evidence in fiscal proceedings.
