Tomasz Woźniak

The topic of this article concerns on explaining the characteristics of the permanent establishment in the double tax treaties, concluded by Russian Federation. Characteristics refers to contracts concluded with the republics of the former USSR and Russia's neighbours, including agreement concluded with the Poland. "Russian specificity" standout of requiring long lasting construction permanent establishment, special rules by which the parties may exclude permanent establishment, even if there are existence grounds for that and existence specific regulations for extraction, exploration or exploitation of natural resources. Total cumulative occurrence laws in rare, because Russian Federation does not have established practise of concluding similar provisions in all concluded agreements. As a result, despite the existence of the Russian permanent establishment, we cannot talk about the Russian model of permanent establishment.

The Role and Place of Permanent Establishment in International Tax Law

The permanent establishment is one of the most important institutions of international tax law. Its role is to set boundaries, justifying taxation of income received by a country trader, but not in the country of tax residence. The permanent establishment forms an institution which is independent from law regulations binding an entrepreneur regardless of him being abroad, found in civil, administrative or commercial law. The permanent establishment may begin to operate only when actual economic activity is conducted. Permanent establishment is regulated by international tax law in a very flexible way. It allows for adopting several types of establishments in commercial contracts, thereby making it useful in conducting different kinds of business activity. The flexibility of regulations allows countries to adapt their own definition of permanent establishment to their local economic, cultural or social specifications.

The legal dependence of the representative of the company as a condition for the creation of the permanent establishment in international tax law One of the basic problems for the taxation of business activities carried abroad, is the issue of the creation of a foreign permanent establishment of the entrepreneur. The permanent establishment can be founded in the form of a dependent agent and fixed place. Predominatingly, in the economic turnover, features of a dependent agent have mandatees and entrepreneur employees posted abroad. Another group are the partners of a civil partnership. Polish civil law allows to develop the relationship between the parties, in consequence, it may lead to experience in a relationship of dependence and independence between the entrepreneur and his representative.

No doubt, with respect to individual information about taxpayers who were granted relief, deferrals or forgiveness on taxes or charges or for whom payments were spread over instalments at an amount of more than a total of PLN 500, the Public Finance Act contains a holistic regulation in the provision of Article 37, para. 1, item 2, point f specifying the data to be disclosed and therefore this Act should be considered a special Act, which rules out the application of the Act on Access to
Public Information. However, there are no grounds for interpreting the unambiguously worded provision more broadly and assume that it also applies to receivables of less than PLN 500.

Keywords: public information, tax relief, local authority taxes, fi scal confi dentiality, legal inference

The commentary concerns a 2014 judgment of the Supreme Administrative Court, pursuant to which judgment a general exemption from inheritance and donations tax can apply also to acquisition of a property right from a family member through usucaption. The author criticises the Court’s view, pointing out that the notion of usucaption in tax law cannot be detached from the meaning given to it in the civil law. The original character of acquisition excludes the possibility of taking into account the personal relationships between the acquirer and the previous holder of a property right.