All Polish residents are liable to paying taxes on their income gained in Poland. Once a year they should file a tax statement and submit it to the competent tax office. In connection to this, a lot of confusion and additional questions may often appear, especially considering changes introduced lately. In fact, it is not that complicated and you may not even need an accountant to have your taxes prepared in most cases. If you are wondering how to submit your PIT return, this article is just for you.
What is actually a tax return? It is a form which is filled by the taxpayer. It includes their annual statement of income and revenues used by tax authorities to estimate liability for tax. There are different kinds of PIT (Personal Income Tax) forms.
First, wait till you receive PIT-11 from your employer. Legally, he is obliged to hand it to you till the end of January. PIT 11 contains the basic information about revenues, incomes, costs and advance payments on personal income tax. It is also the basic source of knowledge necessary to make an annual tax declaration such as PIT-37 or PIT-36.
There are few different PIT forms to choose from. PIT-37 is the most frequently used of them. It applies to you, for example, if you have not get any income from abroad during the year you are settling your taxes, if you work for a company and you do not get the revenue from renting property.
You have to use the data contained in PIT-11 to fill PIT-37 or PIT-36: revenues, tax deductible costs, income, advances collected, as well as contributions included in PIT-11 should be transferred to the appropriate headings PIT-37 or PIT-36; if more than one PIT-11 is received, the amounts from the same headings in all PIT-11 should be added up and put down to the relevant field in the annual settlement.
After being filled in, the annual settlement (PIT-36 or PIT-37) should be sent to the tax office competent for the place of residence. How can you do it? There are couple of options. For example, you can submit it by an official letter or online via available programs. Usually, such programs inform you what to do step by step, for instance, E-deklaracje.
You have to copy all the data from your declaration to the annual declaration.
Deadline for submitting your tax declaration to the tax office is till the end of April 30th every year. This is also the deadline for making the tax payment (if it has been calculated as due for payment in the PIT form).
Changes as from 2019
From January 1, 2019 some changes were introduced. From now, if you don’t fill out your tax declaration, it will be automatically completed for you by the tax office. This service is called “Your e-PIT”. You can check it on the website podatki.gov.pl. as from February 15.
You or your accountant either can verify your e-PIT and accept it without any changes, correct it (e.g. you may change the public benefit organization you want to donate 1% of the tax), or you can add the data that the tax office does not have (for example, tax deductions).
You can also reject your e-PIT and fill in one by yourself the way it was done earlier through E-Deklaracje or on paper.
If you do nothing with the tax return that was prepared for you and you do not settle it yourself with the tax office, on 30 April 2019 your e-PIT will be considered as accepted.
From 2019, a shorter deadline for refunding the overpayment of tax applies for the settlements sent online – 45 days.
Even if you submit your PIT before February, 15, it will be considered as submitted on February 15 – and the shortened deadline will be counted from that date.
How to submit your e-PIT?
First, you have to authenticate yourself to the service. You must provide your data such as:
– your PESEL or NIP together with the birth date;
– the amount of revenue from the declaration for the previous year;
– the amount of income from one of the declarations from employers (eg. PIT-11) for the current year;
or use your Trusted Profile.
Then, you should check your data. After that you can:
– accept the declaration without any changes and download the Official Confirmation of Receipt (UPO);
– if you settle your taxes together with your spouse or as a single parenting child, indicate it in the method of settlement;
– change or choose a public benefit organization (OPP) that you want to donate 1% of the tax;
– change the details of the relief due to children or add a relief;
– add other data (eg. deductions for blood donation, religious cult, payments to an individual retirement security account (IKZE) etc.)
– reject the prepared PIT and settle yourself in a different form. In this case, your e-PIT proposed by the tax office will not be taken into account
– take no actions – on April 30 your settlement will be considered as submitted.
Finally, you need to accept all the changes and send the tax return. After that you can download the UPO.
Why do you actually need to make an annual settlement? On its basis, it may turn out that you will have to pay extra money due to a too small advance tax. It may also turn out that you have an overpaid tax and then you’ll get a tax refund.
We hope that new changes would not perplex you and this year tax settlement would not be harder than it was before. If you want to know more details concerning submitting your PIT, don’t hesitate to leave comments below!
Sources:
- https://www.podatki.gov.pl/pit/
- https://www.pit.pl/pit-37-online/
- https://www.e-pity.pl/pity-2019/zmiany-w-rozliczeniu-pit-za-2018-rok-pity-2019/
- https://ksiegowosc.infor.pl/podatki/pit/pit/rozliczenia/2699445,Fiskus-wypelni-PIT37-i-PIT38-za-podatnika-juz-od-2019-r.html