Minimum tax comes into force

Andrzej Zając, senior associate and solicitor for real estate, CMS We need to wait and see what the full impact of new regulations on the real estate market in Poland will be but we must already take into account that some real estate owners might seek to pass on the costs of the so-called minimal tax to their tenants, which will raise a lot of legal issues. For new leases, this cost, depending on the structure of the leases, might be immediately included in the rents or the operating costs. However for contracts that were signed before the introduction of the law, landlords will be able to pass on the costs if such a provision existed in the original contract (under operating costs). One have to bear in mind that additional taxes on property ownership have been expected for a number of years and from our practice we can say that the appropriate provisions have been added to leases (and depending on the lease the charges are either included or excluded from a list of operating costs)