The change to the Fiscal Penal Code (KKS) announced today by the Minister of Finance is a long-awaited step for taxpayers and tax advisors. The current provisions have been a source of pathology in the actions of the National Tax Administration. Presently, the initiation of fiscal penal proceedings, of which the taxpayer has been notified, automatically suspends the running of the five-year tax limitation period. In practice, this has led to numerous abusive situations, where criminal proceedings were initiated instrumentally solely so that the authorities could deal with tax matters for years. Statistics from the National Tax Administration show that controllers most often initiated fiscal penal proceedings in the final months before the limitation period expired, after which the proceedings remained inactive. In this way, officials exploited the provision to conduct proceedings for years without the risk of the tax liability becoming time-barred.

Therefore, the idea of limiting this possibility is a positive step, provided that all exceptions mentioned by the Minister of Finance are regulated in a rational manner. We must wait for the details, as there is a risk that there will be so many exceptions that the amendment will be merely illusory. For example, if the exceptions were to cover offences defined in Article 54 (failure to disclose the subject matter or tax base) or Article 56 of the Fiscal Penal Code (making a false statement in a return), this would encompass the majority of tax cases - meaning that, from taxpayers’ perspective, almost nothing would change.