Transfer pricing documentation in 2025 is based on the laws and regulations of the Ministry of Finance. In the maze of complex regulations, it’s easy to get lost. Therefore, we propose organizing information about transfer pricing step by step. We hope this small guide will help in applying this issue in practice.
The primary task of transfer pricing documentation is to demonstrate that the terms of transactions conducted in a given tax year between related entities correspond to market conditions—that is, the terms that would be agreed upon between two independent entities operating in the market.
The documentation obligation also applies to transactions with unrelated entities if their place of residence, registered office, or management, as well as the actual owner, is located in a territory or country applying harmful tax competition.
The regulations governing transfer pricing are included in the Personal Income Tax Act and the Corporate Income Tax Act. These issues are also regulated in executive regulations (Regulations of the Minister of Finance dated December 21, 2018):
and their equivalents issued concerning the Personal Income Tax Act.
The first step in the process of preparing transfer pricing documentation is identifying the relationships between entities entering into transactions to answer the question of who prepares transfer pricing documentation.
The types of relationships are detailed in Article 11a(1)(4) of the Corporate Income Tax Act and Article 23m(1)(4) of the Personal Income Tax Act.
Among the most common relationships are shared ownership or transactions between spouses.
The second necessary step is comparing the transaction thresholds, the exceeding of which conditions the necessity to prepare transfer pricing documentation, with the value of transactions conducted in a given financial year.
The current documentation thresholds are as follows:
In the case of entities whose place of residence, registered office, or management is in a territory or country applying harmful tax competition, the documentation threshold is PLN 100,000, regardless of the type of transaction.
It should be remembered that the regulations require determining the above thresholds separately for the revenue and cost sides, as well as for each controlled transaction of a homogeneous nature.
This means that tax obligations may apply to transactions between more than two entities, where each individually does not meet the documentation obligation, but their total sum exceeds the documentation threshold.
Therefore, taxpayers are obliged to analyze the terms of the transactions concluded and determine whether the similarities in the subject of the transaction and other main features of the transaction justify considering them as homogeneous transactions.
This solution aims to eliminate the phenomenon of artificially dividing a homogeneous transaction into several smaller ones to avoid documentation and reporting obligations.
Entities obliged to prepare local transfer pricing documentation, whose financial statements are consolidated using the full or proportional method, may be additionally required to attach group transfer pricing documentation.
Group transfer pricing documentation is prepared by entities belonging to a capital group:
Importantly, an entity belonging to a group does not have to prepare separate group transfer pricing documentation for this purpose but may use documentation prepared by another related entity belonging to the same capital group, documenting the audited period.
However, as indicated by the regulations, using documentation prepared by another entity does not exempt the taxpayer from responsibility for the compliance of its content with the provisions of the Polish Corporate Income Tax Act.
Group transfer pricing documentation includes the following elements concerning the capital group:
Taxpayers have time to prepare group transfer pricing documentation until the end of the twelfth month after the end of the tax year.
If the group transfer pricing documentation held by the taxpayer has been prepared in English, the tax authority may request its version in Polish within 30 days from the date of delivery of the request.
At the same time, the regulations provide for exemptions where, upon meeting statutory conditions, the taxpayer is not obliged to prepare a comparative analysis, and the authority refrains from determining income concerning these transactions.
Thus, even in the case of transactions of lesser value, taxpayers should ensure that they are concluded on market terms to avoid income adjustments and potential fiscal penal liability.
