Fiscal Criminal Code – higher fines

by Rafał Szymański

2 February 2021

Taxpayers have been facing higher fines for fiscal crimes and misdemeanours since the beginning of 2021.

The amount of fine in the context of minimum wage

The minimum wage directly affects the amount of fines for fiscal crimes and fiscal misdemeanours, including the penalty notices for fiscal misdemeanours.

According to the Council of Ministers Regulation of 15 September 2020 (Journal of Laws of 2020, item 1596), the minimum wage in 2021 is 2,800 zloty. It went up by 200 zloty compared to 2020.

Please remember that the minimum wage as of the date of the offence is decisive for determining if the perpetrator has committed a fiscal crime or a fiscal misdemeanour.

Definitions

Pursuant to Article 53(3), a fiscal misdemeanour is an act prohibited by the law and punishable with a fine if the amount of the government levies which was understated or at risk of being understated, or the value of the offending transaction as of the transaction date, does not exceed the five-fold minimum wage – that is 14,000 zloty in 2021.

According to the Fiscal Crime Code (consolidated text in Journal of Laws of 2020, item 19, of 8 January 2020, the “FCC”), fiscal crimes are subject to a fine expressed in day-fine units. The day-fine unit must not be lower than one-thirtieth of the minimum wage or be higher than the four-hundredfold minimum wage (Article 23(3) FCC). When imposing a fine, the court determines each time the number of day-fine units and the amount of one day-fine unit. Unless the Fiscal Crime Code stipulates otherwise, the lowest number of units is 10 and the highest is 720 (Article 23(1) FCC).

As regards fiscal misdemeanours, please note that a fine is stipulated as an amount and may range from one-tenth to twenty-fold the minimum wage, unless the code says otherwise in a specific case (Article 47(1) and Article 48(1) FCC).

A perpetrator of a fiscal misdemeanour may be fined by means of a penalty notice up to double the minimum wage (Article 48(2) FCC)).

Both in the case of a fiscal crime and a fiscal misdemeanour, the court may issue a summary judgment. For a fiscal crime, the court may impose a fine of up to 200 day-fine units, unless the law provides for a lighter penalty (Article 23(2) FCC). For a fiscal misdemeanour, the court may impose a fine of up to ten times the minimum wage (Article 48(3) FCC).

Fines in numbers

The table below summarises the limit values of fines in 2020 compared to 2021 (the decisive point in time is the date of the offence):

* The table does not take account of the option of extraordinarily lighter or harsher penalties under the FCC. 

Conclusions

The higher minimum wage in 2021 compared to the previous year will not make the court judgments and penalty notices much more expensive for perpetrators of fiscal crimes and misdemeanours. The upper limit of fines only reflects the higher minimum wage and, therefore, will most likely not lead to significantly fewer fiscal crimes and fiscal misdemeanours in 2021.