A lot of changes have appeared in 2017 in Polish business. Polish entrepreneurs have at least few reasons to end this year with satisfaction.

Less control and greater confidence in the conduct of business, simplification in tax matters, protection of entrepreneurs and acceleration of the work of offices – this is only a part of more than 100 changes for companies introduced by the Ministry of Development in the last few months. This is not the end of new products. Three large projects are waiting for their turn.

A few small changes are enough to generate millions of savings in the pockets of entrepreneurs.

One of them is a more flexible approach to conducting full accounting. Savings on this account in companies amount to PLN 190 million. And every year. A small change in taxes was also enough for entrepreneurs to record a further PLN 26 million in savings. This resulted in raising the limit of income entitling to use tax in the form of a lump sum.

The change in the regulations on the Social Fund is a revolution for 46 thousand. employers. For over 1.5 million smaller entrepreneurs, it is an important incentive to develop the company and increase employment.

The “100 changes for companies” package is the first edition of facilitations for entrepreneurs, which were announced in the Plan for Responsible Development, created by the Ministry of Development and subordinate agencies. The gradual introduction of further solutions has been taking place for several months.

What else is ahead of us?
– We have yet to adopt: the law on the succession of sole proprietorships, which will enable a smooth change of generations in family businesses, regulations regarding a new form of economic activity, i.e. a simple joint-stock company, and shortening the period of storage and electronisation of employee files – says Deputy Minister of Development Mariusz Haładyj.

What does it mean? At the moment, the company “dies” as it were with its owner. If the owner of a family business happens to a disease or accident and it ends with death, then his business activity is automatically resolved. The name of the company can no longer be used, the NIP number and commercial and employment contracts expire, and all licenses and concessions disappear. Business simply ends life.

According to the calculations of the Ministry of Development, there are as many as 100 within a month. In the sole record of sole proprietors, there are 200,000 people over 65 years of age. This shows how important this change will be. The bill is ready. Public consultations have already been completed.

How will it be? In short: better. After the entrepreneur’s death, it will be easier to continue his activities. The entrepreneur or his heirs will be able to appoint a representative who will lead the company further. Therefore, the enterprise will survive the creator’s death and both the family of the businessman and his employees will not lose.

There is one more significant change for entrepreneurs. It’s about electronisation and a much shorter time to store employee documentation.

How is it now? An entrepreneur – for example, running a construction company, where the rotation is large – must store employee documents for 50 years. What’s more, it can not simply scan the paper and store it on a hard disk or in the cloud. He has stored hundreds of documents for years. Estimates of the ministry say that every year entrepreneurs spend about PLN 130 million on archiving documents themselves.

For young innovators
There is one more significant change for entrepreneurs. It is about introducing a new form of running a business, i.e. a simple joint-stock company.

It is a capital company combining the advantages of a joint-stock company and the simplicity of the company with o.o. For many, it will be a real revolution. Minimum capital requirements and other flexible solutions will be introduced for it, which will allow to “cut” the company to the needs of its founders, especially start-ups. In addition, the provisions on the assumption, liquidation of such a company or its transformation will be simplified.

This is to be an ideal solution for young, innovative companies. The Ministry of Development and the Polish Agency for Enterprise Development assume that in such a business environment young innovators will be able to focus on the idea, not on legal and formal issues. The bill is still at the creation stage.

In the case of changes that are already in force, the deregulation act itself has introduced several dozen business facilitations. Example? Protection of taxpayers who adhered to the dominant interpretation of the tax office appeared.

The easiest way to show this is by example. Entrepreneur Z had doubts about how he should calculate the tax to be paid. He found a tax interpretation on the internet (issued by the Minister of Finance) and simply applied it. He decided that the situation in interpretation was similar to his doubts. And he could make a mistake. The tax authority could have adopted a completely different interpretation, even if in fact both situations overlap. After the change of regulations, entrepreneur Z is protected because he acts “in accordance with established interpretation practice”.

The deregulation act also removed from some companies the obligation to conduct a full accounting.

The entrepreneur does not have to run it if his net income does not exceed EUR 2 million during the year. The Ministry of Development assumes that with higher income no one will have a problem with paying for accounting. In addition, the company will be able to prepare for it when its income approaches the statutory level.

Examples of other changes? This includes the principle that one case can be controlled only once. How it’s working? Officials can not look for irregularities by force. One control of one thing. Failure to identify an irregularity means that you can not control the same activity again.

What else has changed?
The regulations also include a directive on penalties. Thanks to this, no entrepreneur will be charged with a penalty completely inadequate to the offense.

Provisions have been made to ensure that administrative fines are adequate to offenses. For many years there was a lack of uniform and just rules for their application. Example? A very high penalty could be obtained even for a trivial matter, such as the failure of small weight, committed inadvertently and quickly repaired. Today, the office has the option of waiving the penalty in such situations. Another new thing? Unable to remove doubts will be resolved in favor of the petitioner. And this is only part of the changes as part of the amendment to the administrative procedure.

Another example? When calculating the deadline, for example, submitting an appeal, Saturday is already treated the same as a statutory holiday. What does it give? The appeal may be filed on the next weekday. Until now, such rules have only been in effect on public holidays.