Pursuant to Art. 4a(12) of the Corporate Income Tax Act, the tax residency certificate is a certificate stating the taxpayer’s place of residence for tax purposes, issued by a competent tax administration authority of the taxpayer’s country of residence.
The certificate of residence takes an ex-post form, i.e. it documents the factual state.
The regulations do not specify in detail the form and content of the certificate.
This is justified by the fact that there is no possibility to regulate in the Polish tax law the issues related to the form of issuing official documents by foreign tax administrations.
The double tax treaties do not specify the form of the certificate of residence either, which means that the certificate of residence is not always issued on a formalized form, nor does it have to include the name “certificate of residence”.
The very construction of the provision indicates that the certificate of residence should meet at least the following conditions:
(a) be issued by the relevant tax administration,
- b) specify the place of residence (place of residence or registered office) of the taxpayer for tax purposes,
- c) contain the date of issuance of the document or its validity period.
The residence certificate may be drafted in any language.
Please also note that it is considered that the requirement to have a certificate of residence will be met only in the situation where the payer has a document in the nature of a certificate.
Other documents e.g. tax decisions, although they may contain indication of the tax residency of the foreign contractor may not be considered as strictly residence certificates in a situation where the tax laws of a given country allow a taxpayer to obtain a certificate of residence in the form of a separate certificate.
Author: Beata Rawa – Transfer Pricing Manager
