Polish Deal and accounting services – how much will prices go up? | JWW Accounting Office

Polish Deal and accounting services – how much will prices go up?

The years 2020 and 2021 are revolutionary for accounting offices. New guidelines are constantly emerging regarding their activities (e.g. GDPR, AML, reporting to MF), which require constant regulations monitoring and additional procedures implementation. The pandemic has brought new obligations regarding the accounting of crisis shields and remote working. Polish Order consists of a few hundred pages of regulations which are to come into force starting with 1 January 2022. Their implementation exceeds technical possibilities and time limitations of accountants and negatively influences the organisation of daily work activities.

Polish Deal – reorganisation of workflow of accounting offices?

We should bear in mind that the Polish Deal was introduced with only a 30-day vacatio legis. In other words, all employees of accounting offices are required, within just one month, not only to adjust their overall responsibilities, but also to analyse how it will affect the business of their clients. A new model of calculating the health contribution fees depending on the form of taxation, additional reporting to ZUS, changes in the deadlines for paying ZUS contributions, the National e-Invoice System or complicated rules for calculating the middle class relief are just some of the new obligations coming. All the changes definitely increase the workload on taxpayers while at the same time generate new responsibilities for accountants. For accounting offices, the turn of the year is a race against time, analysing elaborate regulations and testing whether financial and accounting software will be properly adjusted to them before any potential discrepancies and the consequences of committing them are irreversible.

Will this affect the price of services?

The increase in prices for accounting and payroll services is unfortunately inevitable. This comes as a result of many corresponding factors such as inflation level, the rise of office maintaining costs, the number of necessary training courses, technical and IT facilities, or the increase in salaries in the financial sector. These are just a few of them. It is already happening now that more and more accounting office owners are announcing new price lists for their services. What increases can entrepreneurs expect? In order to meet the demands of clients while maintaining the quality of services, increases of 40-50% are commonly discussed in the industry.

Polish Deal – a challenge not only for accounting offices?

Intensive work done by the Ministry of Finance to secure the tax system (e.g. introduction of GTU, white list, split payment method) are just some of the changes that has been introduced recently, and each of them generate additional workload for accountants. Lack of coherence with high degree of complexity of tax regulations, whose implementation exceeds technical possibilities and time limitations of accountants, require participation in specialised trainings and adaptation of the IT facilities used. In connection with the Polish Deal, accounting offices and tax advisors will face many challenges and it will be necessary for accountants, HR and payroll specialists to complement their knowledge in order to guarantee the secured procedures for their clients. This involves not only their own work doing it, but also generates high costs.