Foundations & Associations

As a rule, foundations and associations are required to maintain full accounting on principles similar to those for companies. These entities are also CIT taxpayers. The accounting system for foundations and associations depends on whether they conduct business activity or are non-profit organisations, and whether they have public-benefit organisation (OPP) status.

The activities of foundations and associations are largely funded through EU, state or local-government grants, whose settlement requires a separate accounting record of all transactions financed by a given grant. The financial statements of a public-benefit organisation also require a distinction between paid and unpaid public-benefit activities, which imposes yet another classification criterion when recording events in the financial books.

Although foundations and associations are CIT taxpayers by law, their only obligation in this regard is often limited to filing an annual declaration, thanks to the tax exemption under Article 17(1)(4) of the CIT Act.

Public-benefit organisations are additionally required to submit an annual OPP report, comprising a substantive part and a financial part. These reports are filed via forms on the niw.gov.pl portal.