Gloss to the decision of the Supreme Administrative Court of 8 November 2017, file ref. no. II FSK 2864/17

Abstract

Article 4(1)(1)(h) and Article 16(4) of the Act on income of local government units state that proceeds from the tax on civil-law transactions are transferred to the account of the budget of the municipality (gmina) in the area where the seat of the enterprise or its organized part is located. According to Article 11 of this Act, the tax authority transfers these funds to the budget account of the relevant local government unit within 14 days from the day they are credited to the account of the tax office. The distribution of funds on account of this tax is made by a notary as the withholding agent (Article 8 of the Tax Ordinance Act) by preparing a declaration on the amount of tax collected and paid by the withholding agent, including information (constituting a tax declaration within the meaning of Article 3(5) of the TOA) on the amount of tax due to individual municipalities. It follows from the aforementioned regulations that this information, as a tax declaration, is subject to verification pursuant to Article 272 et seq. of the TOA. Furthermore, it is a substantive technical action (Article 3, § 2(4) of the Act: Law on Proceedings before Administrative Courts) thanks to which a municipality that has received less money from the tax on civil-law transactions and wishes to exercise the right to challenge this distribution (Article 133, § 1 of the TOA), as a party to these transfer proceedings, may file a complaint with an administrative court in accordance with Article 3, § 2(4) of the LPAC. The Court’s view that there is no administrative court route in this matter, forcing the municipality to commence proceedings before a common court, is wrong because it does not take into account the aforementioned legal regulations and fails to recognize that they are different from the procedure for distributing funds due to municipalities from income taxes.