You only need to apply for a NIP number once
The NSA, in a recent judgment, confirmed that an entity that is simultaneously a taxpayer of any tax, a tax payer or a payer of insurance premiums, only has to make a single application for identification in order to be assigned a NIP number.
As Anna Rejman of Thedy & Partners points out, the dispute concerned doubts as to whether there is an obligation to re-issue a NIP number for a branch of a foreign company that is a payer of PIT and ZUS in a situation where the company was already subject to tax records in Poland as a taxpayer of CIT and VAT.
In the NSA’s view, imposing a registration obligation on a branch of a company that already has a NIP would be tantamount to reimposing the obligation to submit an identification declaration on the same company, which, in light of the NIP Act and the principle of a single identification declaration, is unacceptable. Thus, a branch of a foreign company may use the NIP number previously assigned to the company.
This issue has already been the subject of numerous rulings by administrative courts, but the tax authorities consistently present in their interpretations a position unfavourable to taxpayers, i.e. that a foreign entity operating in Poland in the form of a branch should have two NIP numbers, one for VAT purposes, for example, for the parent company, and another dedicated to the branch as a payer of PIT and ZUS.
In practice, the possession of two NIP numbers by the same entity may cause difficulties and confusion in relations with contractors related to, for example, discrepancies between the entity’s data included in the list of VAT taxpayers (the so-called White List) and the data included in the National Court Register.