1. Polish Holding Company – what is it?

The Polish Holding Company (hereinafter abbreviated in Polish “PSH”) is a solution introduced into the Polish legal order on 1 January 2022, providing an alternative form to tax capital groups, which until now have not enjoyed much interest. The legislator’s aim was to create more favourable conditions and consequently, to encourage investors to invest by Polish companies in other entities and to locate holding companies in Poland.

2. Reasons for changes to the PSH regime.

However, the legislator promptly noticed that, despite the fact that the adopted solution was intended to be a more attractive instrument for investors than before, it is still not sufficient enough and needs to be amended. That is why, already on 1 January 2023, an amendment comes into force, aimed at making the PSH more precise and attractive, so that, as the legislator indicates in the justification of the law, it becomes competitive with solutions adopted in other countries.

3. Anticipated changes.

In order to achieve this, the legislator decided to introduce significant simplifications and the amendment provides for, among others:

a) the extension of the PSH to companies operating in the form of a simple joint-stock company (until now only a limited liability company or a joint-stock company could become a PSH);

b) the condition for the company not to use the tax exemptions in Article 20(3) (exemption from tax on dividends received in the territory of the European Union) and Article 22(4) of the CIT Act (exemption from income tax on revenue from participation in the profits of legal persons) has been deleted;

c) exemption from taxation of the entirety of dividends received by PSH (until now, the exemption applied to 95% of dividends);

d) in addition, simplifications have been introduced for the subsidiary, which from next year will be able to: benefit from exemptions from taxation of income from activities carried out in the SEZ or within the PSH, hold all rights and obligations in a partnership and hold more than 5% of shares in the capital of another company;

e) an exemption to the ‘Pay and Refund’ mechanism is also introduced for dividends paid by a subsidiary to a PSH.

However, along with the above simplifications, the legislator has also introduced a certain complication, i.e. the extension of the period for fulfilling the conditions necessary for the application of the holding exemptions to 2 years (previously it was only 1 year).

4. What does this mean for investors?

The introduced changes, due to enter into force on 1 January 2023, definitely provide more favourable conditions for PSH, consequently widening the circle of potential companies interested in this tax regime. However, in addition to the simplifications introduced, the legislator has also provided for an extension of the period for meeting the conditions necessary for the application of holding exemptions, which may constitute a disincentive for potential investors. For this reason, in order to verify the most favourable solutions, the interested party should each time verify its tax possibilities. 

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