By Dr Robert Lewandowski, attorney at law (radca prawny) at Derra, Meyer & Partners in Warsaw
At the beginning of 2016 provisions of the Polish Tax Law with regard to the manner of delivery of postal letters was amended. According to these amendments official letters from tax authorities addressed to professional attorneys at law or tax advisors representing their clients (tax payers) within disputes with the Tax Office have to be sent by means of electronic communication or are to be delivered at the place of the tax office appropriate to the dispute (the latter form of communication is rather time consuming and inconvenient to lawyers and tax advisors).
This new law imposes upon professionals the obligation to establish an electronic email address which will enable them to receive mail from the authorities. As a consequence, while empowering attorneys at law/tax advisors the document of the Power of Attorney must include an electronic address and the document of granting the Power of Attorney must additionally be based on an official template available in the Ordinance dated 28 December 2015 (Dz. U. from 2015, Position 2330). This electronic address is the so called ePUAP box for deliveries and can be set up for each individual case the adviser is dealing with. The establishing of this ePUAP box for deliveries is rather easy and fast. The first step is registration at https://epuap.gov.pl/wps/portal.
Following this, the attorney at law has to fill out an application form for obtaining this ePUAP box providing his/her names, PESEL (personal indemnification number), email address, code of authorization, phone number etc. The application forms are available at the following internet – address: https://pz.gov.pl/dt/login/login?ssot=uzdgpmwtwtosikk9d7kr.
After completion, the application must be sent to the PUAP platform and after that the applicant will be asked to confirm the obtaining of his/her box at a place (for instance tax office/bank) indicated by ePUAP and finally receiving his/her personal ePUAP box.
Doubts arise if the attorney at law/taxi advisor wants to delegate his/her authorization to other colleagues and this issue has already been clarified by the Ministry of Finance stating that in this case a template of the specific (limited) Power of Attorney can be used as stipulated in the Ordnance from 28th December 2015. On the template entitled PPS – 1, personal details of the attorney at law/ tax adviser shall be given who intends to grant a substitute and in this part details of the person shall be provided to whom this substitute is granted.
This new directive is aimed at facilitating and simplifying delivery of correspondence and will hopefully prove to be effective in the long term once attorneys and tax advisors overcome their reluctance to embrace these informal informalities.
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