Advertising on Google or Facebook, a subscription to invoicing software, a licence for a graphics application, hosting with a foreign provider, a marketplace commission — all of this is everyday reality even in the smallest sole proprietorship. The invoice arrives without tax, often marked “reverse charge”, and it is easy to consider the matter closed. In fact, in most such cases it is the Polish entrepreneur who becomes the taxpayer and has to account for VAT in Poland. This also applies to businesses using the VAT exemption — and that is precisely where the mistake occurs most often.
What the import of services is and when it actually arises
Import of services (import usług) means acquiring a service from an entity established outside Poland in a situation where the place of taxation of that service is Poland and the obligation to account for the tax passes to the buyer. The basic rule for business-to-business transactions follows from Article 28b of the Polish VAT Act: a service supplied to a taxable person is taxed where the recipient has established its business. Since your company is registered in Poland, VAT on advertising, licences or IT services bought abroad is due to the Polish budget.
It makes no difference whether the contractor comes from the European Union or from outside it — the mechanism is the same for a supplier from Ireland, from the United Kingdom and from the United States. What does matter is the type of service, because the act provides for exceptions to the general rule. Services connected with immovable property, admission to events, restaurant services, passenger transport and the short-term hire of means of transport are settled differently, among others. Before you classify a purchase as an import of services, it is worth checking whether it falls into one of those categories.
VAT-UE registration — required even if you use the exemption
An entrepreneur exempt from VAT who intends to buy a service covered by the Article 28b rule from a contractor in another EU country should register as a VAT-UE taxpayer beforehand. This is done by updating the VAT-R registration form and ticking the relevant box concerning intra-Community transactions. Registration takes place before the first such purchase, not after the invoice has been received.
This is the most common worry among our clients, so let us say it plainly: registering for VAT-UE does not deprive you of the right to the small-business VAT exemption. The company still issues invoices without VAT and remains exempt on domestic sales — it merely receives a number with the PL prefix for use in transactions with foreign parties. Nor does the value of imported services increase the sales threshold that determines the loss of the exemption, because that threshold relates to sales, not to purchases.
One distinction is also worth remembering because it often causes confusion: the VAT-UE recapitulative statement is used to report outgoing transactions — supplies of goods and services provided to taxable persons in the EU. Purchases of services from abroad are not reported in that statement. Registration is required, but the import of services itself is not disclosed in the VAT-UE return.
How an active VAT payer settles it and how an exempt business does
An active VAT payer reports the import of services in the JPK_V7 file simultaneously as output and input tax. If the purchase serves taxable activity, the transaction is neutral — input tax is deducted in the same period in which the output tax arose, so no additional amount goes to the tax office. The only duty is to record the transaction correctly.
The position of an entrepreneur exempt from VAT is entirely different. They too must calculate the tax at the domestic rate applicable to the given service — for online advertising or software licences this is usually 23 per cent — but they have no right of deduction. They therefore report the tax in a VAT-9M return and pay it to the tax office by the 25th day of the month following the month in which the tax obligation arose. The return is filed only for those months in which an import of services actually took place. The VAT paid, which cannot be deducted, increases the acquisition cost of the service for such a business.
In practice this means that advertising costing PLN 400, bought by a VAT-exempt business, really costs around PLN 492. That is a small amount on a single transaction, but with regular spending on marketing and subscriptions the annual difference becomes noticeable and is worth building into the budget.
When the tax obligation arises, the exchange rate and documentation
As a rule, the tax obligation on the import of services arises when the service is performed. For services settled in periods — which is how most subscriptions and advertising campaigns work — the service is treated as performed at the end of each period to which the payments relate. If payment was made earlier, the obligation arises to that extent when the supplier receives it. The invoice date used by the foreign contractor decides nothing here, which comes as a surprise with invoices issued at the turn of the month.
An amount in foreign currency is converted into zloty at the average exchange rate of the National Bank of Poland from the last business day preceding the day on which the tax obligation arose. It is worth applying this rule consistently and archiving the rate used — with several dozen transactions a year, reconstructing it later is time-consuming.
The document for this settlement is the invoice received from the foreign supplier. Many such invoices arrive neither by post nor by e-mail but wait to be downloaded in the customer panel — in the advertising account, in the subscription settings, in the hosting panel. This is the most common source of gaps in documentation: the service was paid for by card, the cost appears on the statement, and nobody downloaded the invoice. A good habit is a monthly review of all foreign subscriptions with the documents collected in one go.
The most common mistakes and how to fix them
The first mistake is omitting the transaction entirely — the invoice without VAT goes into costs and that is the end of the settlement. The second is late VAT-UE registration, usually discovered while tidying up paperwork. The third is the wrong period: the service recorded by invoice date rather than by the moment the tax obligation arose. The fourth is treating all purchases from abroad identically, without checking whether the service falls under one of the exceptions to the general rule.
Each of these situations can be put right. Outstanding settlements are reported in corrections for the relevant periods, the overdue tax is paid together with interest, and the registration form is updated. When cleaning up the past, it often makes sense to file a voluntary disclosure (czynny żal) before the tax office takes any verification steps. The sooner you deal with such a correction, the simpler and cheaper it is to carry out.