What happened to PiS and Andrzej Duda's promise?
The Polish tax-free amount is still one of the lowest in Europe. Our PLN 3,091 is a negligible fraction of what taxpayers in Germany, France and Spain have.
Four years ago, during the election campaign, the topic of raising the amount free of personal income tax was one of the most popular, not to say the most important. PiS and Andrzej Duda promised to raise the exempt amount from PLN 3,091 to PLN 8,000. For all taxpayers. And it was right after the elections. Such an increase was supposed to cost the budget PLN 17 billion. The increase was also ordered by the Constitutional Tribunal, which decided at the end of 2015 that the tax-free amount was too low in Poland. It is ridiculously low compared to other countries that use this solution. More importantly, however, it is so low that even people with incomes below the subsistence level have to pay taxes. This violates the constitutional principle of social justice.
The situation has not changed much since then. People who earn very little have the promised PLN 8,000 free amount, but this is a very small group of taxpayers. With the increase in income, the free amount decreases. The vast majority of taxpayers still have PLN 3,091 of the exempt amount. On the other hand, people with high incomes lost it altogether.
Our free amount has not been indexed for years. In other European countries, the exempted amounts are not only usually much higher than in Poland, but are also indexed. The consulting company KPMG has collected data on free amounts in several European countries and converted them into zlotys. Against this background, we look pale: Germany - the free amount after conversion into zlotys is almost 40,000, France - over PLN 43,000, Switzerland - PLN 57,000, Great Britain - almost PLN 61,000. Even the countries closer to us have more - the Czech Republic has almost PLN 4,200, Slovenia - almost PLN 35,000.
Although people with low incomes received a higher tax reduction amount, a small group of employees earn PLN 660 per month, and this increase applies to such people.
For over 90 percent taxpayers nothing has changed. Moreover, some people with high incomes lost the free amount altogether. They paid for her raise for people with low incomes.
From the free amount, something like a tax credit was made, which depends on the fulfillment of certain conditions by taxpayers. Meanwhile, the free amount is the free amount. Its structure should be democratic. If it is, it should be enjoyed by all taxpayers. Increasing it only for a small part of taxpayers at the expense of another group of taxpayers are sham movements.
Compared to other countries, our free amount is very low. Many countries have exorbitantly high amounts of free allowances from our perspective. We cannot afford it, but even in the Czech Republic, the amount is free for all taxpayers by 30%. higher than ours.
What's more, in many cases this difference deepens, because many countries each year valorize their free quotas, and ours has been standing still for years. For taxpayers, this means a hidden increase in the burden. A few years ago, the CenEA foundation calculated that by freezing the exempt amount and other limits in PIT, households will pay an additional amount of at least PLN 2.3 billion in the following years.
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