Publication date: June 18, 2025
DAC 7 Directive in the Polish legal system
The so-called DAC 7 Directive concerns the reporting of online trade. According to recital 20 of Council Directive (EU) 2021/514 of 22 March 2021 amending Directive 2011/16/EU on administrative cooperation in the field of taxation, the purpose of the regulation is to prevent tax fraud, tax evasion and tax avoidance. This objective is to be achieved by requiring platform operators to report income obtained through digital platforms. In turn, recital 27 of this regulation indicates that the purpose is also to ensure legal certainty for controlled entities, so controls should be carried out in a previously agreed and coordinated manner. This directive was transposed into the Polish legal system on the basis of the amendment to the Act of 9 March 2017 on the exchange of tax information with other countries (Journal of Laws of 2024, item 1588, as amended).
What did DAC 7 change in the Directive on Administrative Cooperation in the Field of Taxation?
The DAC 7 Directive introduced amendments to Council Directive 2011/16/EU of 15 February 2011 on administrative cooperation in the field of taxation and repealing Directive 77/799/EEC. The most interesting changes introduced by the amending Directive will be presented below.
The first change is to specify that automatic exchange means the systematic communication of predefined information to another Member State, without prior request, at pre-established regular intervals in the following situations. As specified in the Directive:
“The competent authority of each Member State shall communicate, by automatic exchange, to the competent authority of any other Member State any information at its disposal concerning the residents of that other Member State relating to the following specific categories of income and capital as interpreted under the national law of the Member State communicating the information:
a) income from employment;
b) directors’ remuneration;
c) income from life insurance not covered by other Union legal instruments on exchange of information and other similar measures;
d) retirement and disability benefits;
e) ownership of real estate and income therefrom;
f) royalties;
g) non-fiduciary dividend income other than dividend income exempt from corporation tax under Article 4 , 5 or 6 of Council Directive 2011/96/EU”.
Additionally, automatic exchange covers the following institutions:
– Scope and conditions of mandatory automatic exchange of information on cross-border advance rulings and advance pricing agreements.
– Scope and conditions of mandatory automatic exchange of information provided by ‘platform operators’.
– Scope and conditions of mandatory automatic exchange of information provided by ‘reporting crypto-asset service providers’.
– Reporting format and exchange of information in relation to “equalisation tax returns” pursuant to Article 44 of Directive (EU) 2022/2523.
The amending directive also introduced a definition of a joint audit. Joint audits should be understood as administrative proceedings conducted jointly by the competent authorities of at least two Member States and concerning at least one person who is of common or complementary interest to the competent authorities of those Member States.
Article 5a entitled “Foreseeable connection” has also been added to the Directive. According to paragraph 1 of this Article, the information requested has a foreseeable connection if, at the time of the request, the requesting authority considers that the information requested will be relevant to the tax affairs of one or more taxpayers. In order to demonstrate the foreseeable connection, the requesting authority should provide the requested authority with the following information:
(a) the tax purpose for which the information request was made; and
(b) a specification of the information required by the administration for the purposes of applying or enforcing the national law of the requesting authority.
Article 8ac was introduced, which provides for the scope and conditions of the mandatory automatic exchange of information provided by platform operators. This is a very complex and extensive regulation, but it is worth taking a look at how this institution was shaped. According to paragraph 1 of this regulation: “Each Member State shall take the necessary measures to oblige ‘reporting platform operators’ to comply with due diligence procedures and fulfil reporting obligations. The competent authority of the Member State shall transmit, by means of automatic exchange, to the competent authority of the Member State where the so-called seller subject to reporting is resident. The Directive precisely indicates what data is subject to reporting, including: name, registered office address and tax identification number, first and last name of the seller, main address or date of birth of the seller who is a natural person. Information must also be provided regarding:
Before indicating how the directive in question was transposed into the Polish legal order, it is worth raising the issue of basic nomenclature, which has not yet been elaborated on, but seems to be of great importance for the interpretation of the legal text in question.
As indicated in the literature on the subject: “the term ‘platform’ should be understood as software, including a website or part thereof, and applications, including mobile applications, which are available to users and enable sellers to connect with other users in order to perform, directly or indirectly, an appropriate activity for those users, as well as arrangements for the collection and payment of remuneration”. The definition of a platform operator is also important from the point of view of this regulation. According to the studies: “this term should be understood as an entity that concludes agreements with sellers in order to make the platform or part thereof available to them. The term ‘seller’ is also defined and covers a platform user who is registered on the platform at any time during the reporting period and performs an appropriate activity”.
It is also worth taking a moment to consider the issue of reporting obligations. As indicated in the literature: “The basic obligation of a platform operator who is not an “excluded operator” is to provide the Head of the National Revenue Administration with annual aggregate information on sellers subject to reporting (not being “excluded”) for the reporting period. The reporting period always covers a calendar year, which complicates the adjustment to the regulations for entities with a “shifted” accounting period and may, to some extent, force doubling the records. The information must be provided by 31 January of the following year and must include information on all sellers identified by the operator as sellers subject to reporting. The information is created based on the electronic document template. It should also be borne in mind that operators submitting information on sellers are also obliged to provide sellers with information concerning them. The platform operator is obliged to collect information about active sellers such as: seller data, information about the activities carried out, including specific data for relevant activities concerning real estate, etc. This results from the verification obligation of the platform operator.
The method of transposing the directive into the Polish legal system
The Act of 9 March 2017 on the exchange of tax information with other countries was amended by the Act of 23 May 2024 amending the Act on the exchange of tax information with other countries and certain other acts. Some of the changes introduced on this basis will be presented here.
The first amendment is the introduction of a regulation indicating that “Public administration bodies and financial institutions (…) upon a written request of the minister responsible for public finances or the Head of the National Revenue Administration, are obliged to provide tax information in the event of a request from the competent authority (…)”. It is also indicated that “The scope of tax information exchanged with other countries includes information necessary for the purposes of applying and implementing the national regulations of the country of the competent authority, which can be obtained by tax authorities on the basis of applicable legal provisions (…).
The legislator in the introduced amendment tries to meet the regulations concerning the protection of personal data. As indicated:
,,Art. 6b. 1. The reporting financial institution (…) and the reporting platform operator (…) are obliged to provide the natural person to whom the tax information relates with information on:
1) collecting, processing and transmitting information in accordance with the Act and
2) the right of that person to obtain from the data controller the information that he or she has the right to obtain from that controller, in sufficient time to exercise his or her data protection rights, before the information is transferred.
2. The reporting financial institution (…) and the reporting platform operator (…) shall immediately notify the reported person within the meaning of (…) and the seller (…) of a data protection breach with respect to their personal data collected and processed for the purposes of automatic information exchange, if there is a likelihood that this data protection breach will adversely affect the protection of their personal data.
Art. 6c. 1. In the event of a breach of data protection in connection with their processing by the Head of the National Revenue Administration for the purposes of performing tasks arising from the Act, the Head of the National Revenue Administration shall immediately notify the European Commission of this breach of data protection, as well as any subsequent actions aimed at eliminating this breach of data protection”.
As regards the institution of joint audit, already mentioned above, attention should be paid to the content of one of the amended provisions, namely “The Head of the National Revenue Administration may request the competent authority of a Member State to conduct a joint audit and express consent to conduct a joint audit at the request of the competent authority of a Member State“.
The above regulations are regulations that are already in force. However, there is also a group of regulations that will become binding only from 1 July 2025, because then their vacatio legis will end. The group of such regulations includes regulations covering the automatic exchange of information about sellers, including:
According to the provision, which is to enter into force on 1 July 2025: “The reporting platform operator shall provide the Head of the National Revenue Administration with aggregate information on sellers subject to reporting for the reporting period, hereinafter referred to as “seller information”, by the end of the month following the end of the reporting period in which the reporting platform operator identified the seller as a seller subject to reporting”. The amendment also specifies what information should be included in the report, including: data identifying the reporting platform operator, such as name and main address or TIN, VAT identification number, if available, but also the value of the total remuneration paid or recognized in each quarter of the reporting period and the number of relevant activities in relation to the group of facilities and the number of days for which the group of facilities was made available during the reporting period.
As indicated in the amendment: “The reporting platform operator is obliged to complete the procedures for collecting and verifying data on sellers and recognizing the seller as a resident of a given country, specified in this section [section IIIA Chapter 3 – footnote ng], in relation to active sellers, hereinafter referred to in this section as “due diligence procedures”.
A platform operator that is not resident for tax purposes in a Member State, provided that the conditions for being recognised as a reporting authority are met, may notify the Head of the National Revenue Administration that it will perform its reporting obligations in Poland.
The Head of the National Revenue Administration is authorised to conduct an inspection of the reporting platform operator’s performance of its obligations related to the application of due diligence procedures.
The new duties of the Head of the National Revenue Administration under the new regulations include:
The above study presents information on the text of the act on the exchange of tax information with other authorities on the basis of the latest amendment introduced and the change in regulations, which will not come into effect until July 2025. The presented study presents only an outline of the changes being introduced, because the relevant regulations are much more extensive. It should be pointed out that both the amendment already made and the regulations that will only start to function in legal transactions impose a number of obligations on both the operators of sales platforms and the Head of the National Court Administration. Despite the significant extension of the obligations incumbent on these authorities, it should be admitted that such solutions will contribute to a positive impact on the exchange of tax information and will allow for the fulfillment of the objectives of the DAC 7 directive, which in an ambitious way wants to seal the market as much as possible against attempts at tax fraud and tax evasion.