Poland’s Council of Ministers adopted the first tranche of legislation implementing the EU’s VAT in the Digital Age package on 2 September 2026, setting out changes that will affect cross-border e-commerce, online platforms and VAT reporting from 2027.
The bill amends Poland’s VAT Act and is designed to align national rules with the first stage of the EU ViDA package. Most of the measures are scheduled to take effect on 1 January 2027, although the legislation must still complete the parliamentary process before becoming law.
For companies selling goods or services across the EU, the changes are important because they alter some of the rules governing the One Stop Shop and Import One Stop Shop systems, commonly known as OSS and IOSS.
OSS allows businesses to report and pay VAT due in multiple EU countries through a single registration and return rather than registering separately in every member state where qualifying consumer sales take place.
One of the changes concerns the EUR 10,000 threshold used to determine the place of taxation for certain intra-EU distance sales of goods and services. In Poland, the equivalent threshold is PLN 42,000.
The bill is intended to standardise how that threshold is calculated. According to Thomson Reuters, only qualifying intra-EU distance sales dispatched from the seller’s member state of establishment would count towards it, excluding certain sales made from warehouses located in other countries.
The legislation also clarifies the circumstances in which an online marketplace or another electronic interface is treated as a deemed supplier for VAT purposes.
That concept matters because a platform can, in specified situations, be treated as if it had itself bought and sold the goods being supplied through its marketplace. The proposed rules extend and clarify this treatment, including some platform-facilitated business-to-business transactions where the buyer’s intra-Community acquisitions are VAT-exempt.
The Polish bill also introduces a single point in time for determining when VAT becomes chargeable on transactions reported through OSS. KPMG said the measure is intended to harmonise treatment across Union and non-EU OSS supplies.
Registration procedures for OSS and IOSS are also due to be simplified.
IOSS is the system used to report VAT on qualifying distance sales of imported goods. Under the proposed Polish rules, taxpayers using the small-business VAT exemption would no longer be able to use IOSS to report sales of imported consignments. Thomson Reuters states that the restriction applies to imported consignments worth up to EUR 150.
Another notable change expands the scope of OSS beyond conventional e-commerce.
The Union OSS system is to be extended to certain business-to-consumer supplies of natural gas, electricity, heating and cooling. This would allow qualifying suppliers to account for VAT on these cross-border utility transactions through the OSS framework rather than relying on separate VAT registrations in each relevant jurisdiction.
For international businesses using Poland as a base for online sales or digital operations, these measures are primarily compliance changes rather than changes to VAT rates.
They affect where sales are taxed, how thresholds are calculated, whether a platform is treated as the supplier and which reporting mechanism can be used. That means finance and tax teams may need to review transaction flows and system logic before the planned 2027 start date.
The reforms will continue beyond January 2027.
The existing call-off stock procedure is scheduled to be repealed on 1 July 2028 and replaced by a simplified procedure for transfers of a business’s own goods between EU countries within the OSS framework. KPMG describes this as an own-goods movement procedure, while Thomson Reuters confirms that the replacement is due from July 2028.
The staged timetable is important. The September decision represents cabinet approval of the first Polish ViDA implementation bill, not the end of the legislative process.
Most of the practical changes are intended to begin on 1 January 2027, while the own-goods reform follows in 2028. Parliament may still amend the bill before it is enacted and published in the Journal of Laws.
For businesses, the immediate significance is therefore preparation rather than an overnight change in VAT treatment. Companies using OSS, IOSS, online marketplaces or cross-border utility arrangements now have a clearer view of the framework Poland intends to introduce, but the final enacted wording remains the key reference point.
