Jarosław Włoch

Jarosław Włoch is a partner at Tax Legal Partner, an attorney-at-law and a licensed tax advisor. He represents businesses in tax audits, in customs and fiscal audits (kontrola celno-skarbowa) and in disputes with the Polish tax authorities, through to the provincial administrative courts (WSA) and the Supreme Administrative Court (NSA). He also secures transactions, reorganizations and due diligence from the tax side. He runs proceedings in Polish and keeps foreign clients informed in English.

Once an audit or a dispute with the tax authority begins, the cost of a wrong decision and the cost of delay grow week by week. These proceedings are not just a formality. How the case is run from the start changes what happens at the end.

I represent clients in tax audits and customs and fiscal audits, in proceedings before the tax authorities, and in litigation before the provincial administrative courts (wojewódzki sąd administracyjny, WSA) and the Supreme Administrative Court (Naczelny Sąd Administracyjny, NSA). Nothing is filed late, and nothing is filed in a hurry. Each step goes out on time and on my own case plan. What has a decisive role in these cases is a precise reading of the file and an argument built consistently enough to hold at every stage that follows, from the objections to the audit report through to the cassation appeal.

You will get an honest assessment of your chances and of the possible scenarios, including when the case does not look promising. Whether to go further is your decision, made on the basis of analysis rather than hope.

If you are a foreign owner or director, one thing matters more than any of this. Proceedings in Poland are conducted in Polish, on Polish deadlines and under Polish law, and the deadlines run whether or not the correspondence has been translated. I run the case in Polish and keep you informed in English, so you are never approving a step you do not fully understand.

I hold both licences, attorney-at-law and licensed tax advisor, which in Poland are two separately regulated professions. One person carries the case from the authority’s first letter, through the entire tax proceeding, to the complaint before the provincial administrative court and the cassation appeal before the Supreme Administrative Court. There is no handover between a lawyer and a tax advisor halfway through, and no explaining the same set of facts twice.

Every case starts with a conversation about what actually happened and what your concerns are. Then I choose the strategy. A dispute over one questioned invoice calls for a different approach than an allegation of involvement in VAT fraud, and the arguments that persuade a court at first instance are not the ones that persuade the Supreme Administrative Court.

On transactions and reorganizations I work from the risk side. First I establish what in a given structure is likely to attract the authority’s attention, then I propose one specific protective solution that works best, rather than a set of variants for you to choose between.

Throughout, I build the strategy on the current line of case law rather than on the wording of the provision alone, and I correct it as the case develops.

• Tax audit or customs and fiscal audit that has just started, where you need to decide quickly whether to defend your position or close the matter with a correction
• Dispute with the tax office that has already reached the administrative court, where you need someone to assess the real chances rather than simply complete the formalities
• Questioned VAT deduction, because your company was drawn unknowingly into a chain of transactions in which someone else was defrauding the tax system
• Proceeding in which the authority seeks to hold you personally liable, as a board member, for the company’s tax arrears
• Transaction, restructuring or reorganization that you want to secure from the tax side before it happens
• Tax due diligence before an acquisition or a sale, when you need to know which tax risks come with the business

Facing an audit, a dispute with the tax office, or a transaction that needs to be secured? Do not wait until the deadline starts working against you. A first call is enough to establish what you are actually dealing with and what your options are.

• Tax disputes: proceedings before the authorities and the administrative courts
• Tax audits and customs and fiscal audits
• Due care and the risk of unknowing involvement in VAT fraud
• Personal tax liability of board members and third parties
• Reorganizations and the tax security of transactions
• Legal and tax due diligence
• Transfer pricing
• Withholding tax
• VAT

• Expert articles and commentary in Forbes Poland, Rzeczpospolita and INFOR, among Poland’s leading business and legal publications
• The evolution of VAT documentation and record-keeping in 2017 and 2018, Institute of Tax Studies Modzelewski i Wspólnicy, 2017
• Tax schemes: a new obligation for public sector entities, INFOR, 2019
• Speaker at the My Company Polska conference “Settlements in business”
• Lecturer for the Kraków Bar Association of Attorneys-at-Law
• Lecturer for the chambers of tax advisors in Kraków and Katowice, for accounting associations and for the Kraków Chamber of Commerce and Industry
• Specialist courses and training in VAT, CIT, mandatory disclosure of tax arrangements (MDR), Poland’s national e-invoicing system (KSeF) and tax litigation, including the course “VAT from the ground up”

• Attorney-at-law, registered by the Kraków Bar Association of Attorneys-at-Law under no. KR-2642
• Licensed tax advisor, registration no. 14100
• Jagiellonian University, law
• Cracow University of Economics, postgraduate studies in tax advisory

Polish, English