It is now available PZF 2020 Almanac. Of course, we recommend the full content, but due to the profiling of the Blog, we are interested in the legal and peri-legal issues presented in it.
- Article on enforcement seizure vs MPP
In particular, the long-awaited by the industry article "Seizure of the supplier's receivables by the enforcement authority and the possibility for the factor to release itself from joint and several liability within the meaning of Article 108a(5) of the VAT Act" (page 49 et seq.) by the team of the law firm Radcowska E.Guzowska i spółka sp.k. is welcome. The problem discussed therein, after all, is only slightly younger than MPP itself, and probably many a factoring company's legal department had to deal with it before any more publications on the subject (including the quoted explanations and interpretations). We have signaled the topic on the Blog, among others. here as "Implementation of bailiff attachment under MPP (Split Payment)" as well as was discussed by the legal panel at Risk & Supervision Meeting 2020, which we signaled here In "Split Payment and the Factoring Business." The Almanac article comprehensively discusses the as-yet-unresolved issue from a factor's perspective, also including important industry demands de lege ferenda. Significantly, PZF and ZBP are working with the MF to obtain a ready-made legislative solution to solve the problem, or an official clarification confirming that the realization of a bailiff's seizure through a transfer of funds to the bailiff has the effect of exempting the factor from the joint and several liability described in Article 108a of the VAT Act. As of today, the article is a great guideline for the legal departments of factoring companies.
- JPK in terms of anti-fraud compliance
Another article, i.e. "Single Control File = a new quality in risk assessment and monitoring systems" (p.61)(S.Fuks, A.Suska, K.Telega) is also not without significance from a legal perspective. JPK gives unlimited possibilities in terms of recognizing transactions and knowing the financial situation also for the factoring company. It can lead to automation of the process of risk assessment and monitoring of financial condition. From our perspective, the most relevant is the role of this tool as a semi-automatic method of catching frauds and non-compliant transactions, in particular looking for fictitious transactions, or anomalies. This issue is signaled by the authors in the section "Evaluation of unusual transactions". Undoubtedly, the solutions described in the article are forward-looking for the industry, and for some of its representatives they are also the present. From my perspective, it is a solid piece of the puzzle of a factoring company's anti-fraud system.
- Cross-sectional analysis
Also worth reading is the article "Directions of changes in the development of the Polish factoring industry resulting from changes in the legal and technological environment (M.Pokrywa)(p.229 et seq.). The article cross-sectionally discusses the legal changes of recent years (amendment of the VAT Act; MPP; VAT Taxpayers White List; RODO; e-invoicing; AML) Particularly interesting is the synthetic look at the subject of MPP in factoring. However, due to the high dynamics of these legal changes, they undoubtedly need to be kept up to date - for example, AML is about to undergo another big change related to the implementation of another directive.
