Until January 23, 2020, the National Tax Administration blocked 648 bank accounts, on which it secured PLN 86 million. But this is not the only effect of the operation of the Polish Stir teleinformatic system.

Thanks to STIR, the tax department managed to break up carousels in industries including food, construction, automotive and textile. Fraudsters can no longer freely trade their money on bank accounts.

The number of blockades, although relatively small, is steadily increasing. From July 2019, not only business accounts can be blocked, but term deposits can also be blocked if money from fraud has been transferred to them. Since July last year, banks and cooperative savings and credit unions have also been sending more data to STIR, e.g. about the place and date of logging into a suspicious account, as well as the IP address of the computer from which the transfer order was placed.

Blocking of funds may mean a loss of financial liquidity for entrepreneurs. 

Before taking such a step, a risk analysis is prepared, during which the data on financial flows collected using STIR are compared with information from JPK_VAT, data from tax returns and sent to the tax office when registering business. Data on financial flows are also compared with information from JPK_VAT to prevent payment of undue VAT refunds.

Polish Financial Ministry is very satisfied with the operation of the algorithm, and is also willing to share his experience. In December 2019, the department was visited by a delegation of the Chinese tax department to learn about the functioning of the latest solutions in the implementation of the split payment mechanism and the STIR system. A similar system is to become effective from 2024 throughout the European Union. The CESOP will collect information about the recipients of cross-border transfers that will be sent by banks and other financial institutions .