Exemption of Polish Local Government Units and their Unions from Corporate Income Tax – The Fundamentals, Evolution of Solutions and Legal Framework

Abstract

Local government units and their unions as income earning legal entities are subject to the provisions of the Act on corporate income tax. Being subject to income tax law translates also to the opportunity of benefiting from tax privileges established by the law. The establishment and application of tax preferences on income of local government units and their unions is an important instrument in supporting their efforts to perform important – in social and economic terms – public tasks. Tax privileges also serve an important protective function with regard to the public funds being managed by local government units and their unions. To ascertain the fundamentals and the scope of the regulatory law regarding subjective and objective tax exemptions addressed to local government units and their unions, as well as the way in which these regulations evolve, the tax legislation and judicial practice were analysed and the reference literature was reviewed with the application of the dogmatic-legal and empirical methods. The hypothesis on the conditional nature of tax exemption and the need for strict interpretation thereof was proven to be correct. The inability to apply such exemptions in metropolitan unions, which can be interpreted as discriminatory, was evaluated critically. Moreover, it has been proven that the provision of statutory income tax exemption thresholds to local government units and their unions is an overly complicated process since the Act income tax incorporates references to the provisions of the Act on the income of local government units which do not conclusively determine the revenue sources of these entities.