We have won a long-standing tax dispute for our business client

In 2015, employees of the IR Office appeared at the Company in order to carry out a tax inspection of the VAT for each month of 2013. The audit ended with unfavourable findings. The taxpayer (who was not then represented by a professional attorney) was requested to pay an additional amount of VAT determined as a result of the estimation. This amount was settled.

Our tax advisor Sławomir Wiciak represented the Company in six tax proceedings conducted by the Head of the Inland Revenue Office and Director of the Tax Administration Chamber in Zielona Góra, and then in court proceedings before the Voivodship Administrative Court in Gorzów Wielkopolski.

The tax proceedings in this case were initiated in June 2016. Originally, the appeal body, by a decision of April 2018, repealed six decisions of the Head of the Inland Revenue Office in their entirety and remanded the cases. However, subsequent decisions issued in this case (this time the VAT payable was set at a much lower amount) were upheld by the appeal body. The proceedings before the tax authorities were completed in April 2019.

The Law Firm filed six complaints with the Voivodship Administrative Court in Gorzów Wielkopolski against these decisions. Interestingly, the Court considered these cases twice and issued contradictory judgments. The first time, it shared the position of the tax authorities and dismissed the complaints in their entirety. Then, however, as a result of the cassation complaints filed by the Law Firm, the VAC, in a self-control procedure, overturned six of its previous judgments, agreeing with the arguments of our tax advisor presented in the complaints in their entirety. By judgments of December 2019, all appealed decisions of the Director of the Chamber of Tax Administration in Zielona Góra and preceding decisions of the body of first instance were overturned and the costs of court proceedings were awarded to the Company.

The final stage of the case took place in May 2020, when the Revenue Office issued decisions for our Client stating that the VAT had been overpaid in disputed periods. As a result, after many years of litigation, the Company recovered the overpaid VAT, which was illegally demanded by tax authorities.