Patryk Walewski

Patryk Walewski advises at Tax Legal Partner on the taxation of property transactions, on tax reviews and on applications for individual tax rulings (interpretacja indywidualna). He also works on supporting companies throughout the transition to Poland’s national e-invoicing system (KSeF) and on real estate tax, including installations at businesses generating electricity for their own use. He is a trainee attorney-at-law and advises in Polish and in English.

When you are selling a property or you are putting a new obligation in place such as Poland’s national e-invoicing system (KSeF), you know the decision has to be made quickly. The problem is that the cost of an early mistake is many times the cost of the analysis, and at that stage you cannot yet see where the mistake would be. That is what I am for: to see it for you, before you decide.

If a sale agreement or a letter of intent is sitting on your desk and you do not know whether the transaction falls under VAT or under transfer tax (podatek od czynności cywilnoprawnych, PCC), we settle that before you sign, so that you neither pay both taxes nor lose an exemption you were entitled to. If something in your filings is bothering you but you cannot say what, we go through them in a tax review, while you can still file a correction yourself rather than on demand from the authority. If you are planning something with unclear tax consequences, I prepare an application for an individual tax ruling. To obtain protection for a planned action, timing matters: the application should go in before you act. Rolling out e-invoicing and unsure where to begin? We map the document flow first, and only then look at the system. And if you generate electricity for your own needs and are not certain which installations and structures are subject to real estate tax (podatek od nieruchomości), we establish that before the return is filed, while the position can still be chosen rather than merely defended.

The result is a named tax risk and a specific answer on what to do about it before the authority asks its first question: a correction, an application for an individual ruling, or a change to how the transaction is structured. If there is no identified risk, I confirm that in writing, and you proceed with a document that supports your position in an audit.

If you are investing in Polish property from abroad, the questions are the same but the answers are not transferable. Whether a sale carries VAT or transfer tax is decided under Polish rules and often turns on the history of the building and on elections made at the right moment, and the deadline for making those elections does not move because the decision has to be approved in another country. That is worth establishing at the letter of intent stage rather than at the notary.

Before I reach for a template, I establish what matters to you in the transaction and when it has to close. With property that usually comes down to one question. Will the sale be subject to VAT or to transfer tax? The answer decides how much of the price you actually keep, so I look for it before signature rather than at the filing stage.

In a tax review I say directly what needs correcting now, what can be secured for the future, and what is better left alone. You come out of the review knowing which three matters to deal with this month, rather than holding twenty observations with no order of priority.

Applications for individual rulings are written so that the description of the facts leaves as little room as possible for a second reading. It is meticulous work, and it can decide whether the resulting document supports your position in an audit or itself becomes the subject of discussion.

With e-invoicing, the support you need depends on where you are. If you are still designing the process change, we set the document flow and the invoicing rules, so the first settlement after go-live is structured to minimize the risk of corrections. If the system is already running and the numbers are drifting, we work on what is actually going wrong.

In each of these the work happens before the date that fixes your position: the signature, the filing, or the go-live.

• Sale, purchase or commercialization of property, where it has to be established whether the transaction falls under VAT or transfer tax
• Tax review of your filings, when something may have been missed and it is better to find out before an audit does
• Application for an individual tax ruling, securing a planned action with unclear tax consequences
• Rollout of e-invoicing (KSeF) that has to be translated into concrete accounting and document-flow processes
• Real estate tax, including the taxation of installations and structures at businesses generating electricity for their own use

Planning a property transaction or an e-invoicing rollout? Before you sign the agreement or change your processes, find out what it means for tax. If a signature, a filing or a go-live date is in front of you, a first conversation establishes how much time is left.

• Property taxation: VAT and corporate income tax
• Tax reviews
• Individual tax rulings
• National e-invoicing system (KSeF)
• Real estate tax in the energy sector
• Corporate and personal income tax in day-to-day business
• Mandatory disclosure of tax arrangements (MDR)

• “Exemption of income from raffle prizes and bingo”, a chapter in Tax reliefs: deductions, exemptions and other preferences in PIT and CIT, C.H.Beck, 2023
• “Loot boxes: harmless entertainment or gambling?”, paper delivered at the First National Academic Conference on Finance and Taxation in the Face of New Social and Economic Challenges, 2023
• “The 23% VAT rate: its history and current legal status”, Doradztwo Podatkowe, bulletin of the Institute of Tax Studies, no. 6(322)/2023
• “Slimming down continued: SLIM VAT round three”, expert article in Wasza Turystyka, 2023
• “Relief for hypothetical interest”, in Closing the 2024 tax and accounting year, C.H.Beck, 2024
• Chapters on introductory issues, on social security in B2B contracts and on health insurance in B2B contracts, in B2B contracts in practice: legal, tax and social security aspects, C.H.Beck, 2026
• “Procedures for B2B contracts in the public sector after the labour inspectorate reform”, a chapter in Internal documentation for the new obligations of public finance entities, C.H.Beck, 2026

• Cracow University of Economics, law
• Trainee attorney-at-law, registered by the Kraków Bar Association of Attorneys-at-Law under no. APL-KR-260167. In Poland this is a supervised, multi-year professional training completed after a law degree and a competitive entrance examination, leading to admission as an attorney-at-law.

Polish, English