DGP: Homeowners in the capital can’t pay the tax
Residents of Warsaw alert that many of them still have not received a decision setting the amount of property tax for 2020 and 2021. The city calculates that the problem concerns only 90 thousand taxpayers - writes Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.
Michał Nielepkowicz, tax advisor, partner in Thedy & Partners, commenting on the matter in the newspaper, points out that in fact the pandemic has affected the longer time of settling taxpayers’ cases due to remote work or absence of officials. This situation basically affects all tax authorities. In Warsaw, however, we are dealing with a special situation concerning the creation of the Taxpayer Service Centre, where tasks related to local taxes, including real estate tax, which until now were performed by more than a dozen different districts of the capital city of Warsaw, were concentrated.
As a result, it actually resulted in even longer time of handling cases, especially for natural persons, because we know from practice that cases concerning other taxpayers are handled quite efficiently.
Importantly, in the case of individuals, the issuing of assessment decisions is, in principle, limited to confirming the data submitted by the taxpayer and checking the current rates, and the tax authorities rarely carry out any verification in this regard. Hence, such decisions should be issued out of hand. In principle, no authority in such a situation carries out a tax investigation in the classic sense and to its full extent.
What is important, in some cases the prolonged issuance of a decision by the tax authority on property tax may result in negative financial consequences for the taxpayer in the form of the necessity to pay the property tax once within 14 days from the delivery of the decision in a situation, where under the regulations, the expeditious issuance of a decision to the taxpayer at the beginning of the year for a given tax year would entitle the taxpayer to spread the tax payment into 4 instalments. Unfortunately, there is not much that taxpayers can do in such a situation. In theory, it is possible to submit a letter of request to a higher level authority, but in practice, paradoxically, submitting a letter of request may even prolong the resolution of the case. Only a change in regulations in this respect could help taxpayers – e.g. such that the real estate tax resulting from the decision establishing the tax would always be payable in 4 successive instalments. Then, delivery of the decision e.g. in December 2021 would entitle the taxpayer to pay the tax in 4 instalments in the following year, i.e. 2022.
It remains to be hoped that after the transfer of the aforementioned functions to the COP, the office will catch up with the backlog and actually serve taxpayers even more efficiently than before the pandemic and the migration of functions and data, and thus taxpayers will not be exposed to the aforementioned negative financial consequences.
The entire article was published in Dziennik Gazeta Prawna of 7 October 2021, page B2