Irrational position of authorities on family foundation
The Director of the National Fiscal Information has issued an individual interpretation on the taxation of payments from a family foundation to spouses who are joint founders of the foundation.
As Marek Kończak of Thedy & Partners explains, in the interpretation the authority unexpectedly decided that each of the founders may only benefit from a partial (in practice: half) exemption of the payments from PIT. This means that in the situation where the founders are spouses remaining in the system of joint property, the disbursement from the foundation – apart from being taxed with CIT at a rate of 15 per cent on the part of the foundation – will also be taxed with PIT (effectively at a rate of 7.5 per cent).
In our view, this approach is incorrect, formalistic and contrary to the purpose of the introduction of the family foundation legislation, which is to encourage the transfer of family businesses (!) to the family foundation. The approach of the tax authorities reduces the attractiveness of family foundations for spouses in a community property regime and thus may distort the meaning of a family foundation.