On November 19th, the Polish Ministry of Finance published a draft amendment (dated 18 October) to regulations on the jurisdiction of tax authorities. Under current regulations, foreign withholding tax reclaims must be submitted with local tax authorities where the Polish companies paying the dividends reside. For institutional investors (or any other large foreign investor for that matter), in practice this means filing their Polish withholding tax reclaims with a multitude of tax authorities, making the filing a laborious and burdensome process.

Under the amended regulations, such withholding tax reclaims can be filed with the central tax authorities. Once effective, the amended regulations will save foreign investors a lot of time and effort. Not only with respect to filing claims but also with respect to responding to information requests from Polish tax authorities. The amendment is intended to become effective on 1 January 2021.

Details of the proposal (in Polish) can be found here.