Mateusz Stańczyk; Senior Manager w Crido Taxand.
The Polish tax system certainly is not transparent and clear, which is probably natural when it comes to "young" tax systems. However, it may indicate that it is also attractive, because it is still in the process of formation. On one hand often there are no structures/vehicles, specialized and known in more mature jurisdictions, allowing to, for example, reinvest profits without taxation (such as RETIS - Real Estate Investment Trust), and on the other hand the present provisions, when analysed more thoroughly, allow to achieve similar effects with other methods. In particular, investors – including real estate investors – use an entity similar to REIT, namely the Closed Investment Fund. Although it does not fully reflect the characteristics of RETIS (especially from the corporate point of view), it gives similar, and sometimes even greater, tax advantages (exemption from taxation of current profits, the possibility of tax-neutral distribution), is more and more attractive and is becoming more broadly used.
When planning an investment, it is also worth to pay attention to appropriate protection of the investor's tax situation, associated both with the acquisition of real estate (in this case of particular importance are regulations related to VAT), as well as with the ongoing financing of the investment (tax on civil law transactions, thin capitalization, withholding tax).