Poland – What is SAF?

By Artur Plutowski, EFS Group Sp. z o.o.

The Standard Audit File for Tax (SAF-T) is a concept developed by the OECD and adopted by some EU Members (e.g. Austria, France, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Portugal, Poland). It is designed to provide tax authorities with reliable accounting data, exported from an accounting system, for a specific time period, easily readable by virtue of its standardisation of layout and format.

Current status

Generally, the SAF-T reporting became obligatory for all VAT-payers in July 2018. Despite scheme changes (scheme no. 3 is binding), SAF-T reporting is nothing more than a source of additional information which is not disclosed in VAT returns (monthly or quarterly) or EC sales lists.

There are two types of SAF-T reporting in Poland: (i) mandatory and (ii) on-demand (of Tax Authorities).

The following identification data are disclosable in mandatory reporting: (i) on taxpayer (e.g. name and ID number), (ii) on customer(s) (e.g. name, address and ID number), (iii) on transaction(s) (e.g. number of the invoice, date of transaction, net and output or input tax values).

Changes

The changes concern mandatory reporting. The first report, according to the new standard, must cover October 2020 and is due on 25 November 2020.

The new standard covers significant changes to the scheme itself, as well as new scope of information (combining data from VAT returns and VAT registers). It covers also data not disclosed in either VAT returns or VAT registers (typically), e.g. (i) CN code of goods sold, (ii) identification of transactions between related parties or mandatory split-payment or other specific taxation regimes, (iii) allocation of goods or services to particular and pre-defined group GTU1-13. This means that data required by the new standard may be located in different modules of the CRM/ERP system used by particular tax-payer or may not be available at all. Therefore, implementation of the new standard should not be limited to IT actions only, it requires solid VAT analysis, especially when potential penalties are considered (approximately EUR 115 per error made in a report).

We developed a lightweight application dedicated especially for SAP, Oracle or Dynamics users collecting required data and generating SAF-T reports in the new standard and are able to assist in implementation.

Published: Indirect Taxes Newsletter, No. 11 Autumn 2020 l Photo: irena iris szewczyk - stock.adobe.com