Offences related to the Value Added Tax (VAT) in judicial practice in Poland.

• In Event: Economic Crime and Property Crime

Abstract

Offences related to VAT fraud significantly reduce revenues to the State Treasury, violate the certainty of economic turnover and the principles of competition. Combating it and sealing tax law are therefore important tasks of the state. In Poland, these tasks were pursued, inter alia, through such legislative changes in tax law. In the opinion of the legislator, it was also necessary to introduce new provisions on the grounds of criminal law.
In this paper, it is analysed in detail the content of the provisions introduced into the Criminal Code regulating the material and intellectual falsification of a VAT invoice, the statistical picture of the crime of invoice falsification and the results of a court case-file study of 194 cases of the analysed offences completed between 2017 and 2022. On the basis of such extensive research material, information was sought on the size and characteristics of this phenomenon, the perpetrators of these crimes, the state's response to them and the answer to the question: have the new regulations fulfilled the assumed reduction of VAT crime?

Author

• KONRAD BUCZKOWSKI, Institute of Law Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences