Today, it can be said with confidence that transfer pricing in Poland has evolved from a formal documentation requirement into a key area of tax risk management. For companies belonging to groups of related entities, this represents a fundamental shift in approach — from reactive compliance to proactive risk mitigation aimed at preventing tax audits that may result in multi-million-zloty income adjustments.
In 2024, the Polish National Revenue Administration (KAS) doubled its effectiveness in detecting transfer pricing irregularities compared to the previous year.
In the first half of 2025 alone, the scale of understatements was already 30% greater than in the entire year 2023.
While the number of audits has decreased — from over 350 in 2020–2023 to approximately 270 in 2024 — their effectiveness has increased significantly.
In 2024, more than 50% of audits resulted in income adjustments, and the total amount of adjustments exceeded PLN 750 million, which is twice as much as in 2023.
A notable difference in effectiveness can be observed between customs and fiscal offices (UCS) and regular tax offices. UCS units accounted for over 90% of the identified income understatements, becoming highly specialized units in the field of transfer pricing audits.
Tax authorities select entities for audit based on financial patterns suggesting potential transfer pricing manipulation, including:
Particular attention is paid to financial transactions — authorities analyze not only interest rates but the entire financing structure.
In cases of excessive indebtedness, they may recharacterize part of the debt financing as equity, leading to the disallowance of a portion of interest expenses and an upward adjustment of taxable income.
Example: The Podlaskie branch of KAS revealed that a consumer electronics company overstated its costs by PLN 186 million, reporting a loss instead of taxable income, resulting in nearly PLN 4 million in additional corporate income tax (CIT) payable.
TPR data enables authorities to compare applied prices with market ranges and detect manipulation of benchmarking analyses.
Authorities may also verify correlations between related-party transactions and reported tax losses in CIT filings.
These disclose financial flows from Poland to other jurisdictions — e.g., payments for intangible services, interest, and income subject to withholding tax (WHT).
With the mandatory use of the National e-Invoicing System and submission of JPK_CIT files, tax authorities are gaining unprecedented access to financial data.
This enables analysis of, among others:
From 2026, large multinational groups (with revenue >EUR 750 million or >PLN 3.5 billion) will be required to publicly disclose tax data broken down by jurisdiction.
This is another source of insight into cross-border settlements.
New reporting obligations concerning the top-up tax will disclose the effective tax rate of entities operating in particular jurisdictions.
This applies to groups with revenues exceeding EUR 750 million and introduces a minimum 15% CIT rate.
In August 2025, the Minister of Finance established a Task Force on Combating Aggressive Corporate Tax Planning, tasked with developing recommendations in four areas:
At the same time, a KAS Competence Centre for Combating Aggressive Tax Planning was established in Kraków, using advanced data analytics based on TPR, CIT, JPK_CIT and KSeF data.
KAS auditors are becoming increasingly specialized — they have been trained in OECD Transfer Pricing Guidelines and rely on multiple data sources: financial statements, TPR, CIT, IFT, and soon also JPK_CIT, KSeF and Public CbCR.
This enables authorities to benchmark taxpayers against comparable entities with similar business profiles.
In August 2024, a presidential bill was submitted to Parliament, under which CIT taxpayers with revenues exceeding PLN 5 billion would be subject to mandatory transfer pricing audits at least once every three years.
The proposal also provides for:
The conclusions are clear:
The primary objective for businesses should be to minimize the risk of triggering an audit, as defensive options become significantly more limited once proceedings begin.
In practice, this requires:
At Legal Link, we have specialized in transfer pricing advisory for years, offering comprehensive support in:
Don’t wait for a tax audit. Review your transfer pricing before the tax authorities do. Contact our team at Legal Link – we will help you assess the risks, prepare the necessary documentation, and protect your transfer pricing policy against potential income adjustments.
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