POLAND Law and Practice Contributed by: Piotr Augustyniak, Nash Concept Ltd
cost of benefits to a group III beneficiary modelled against the alternative cost of a taxed bequest. 9.3 Cohabitation and Unmarried Couples Cohabitation as such creates no status in Polish law: there is no property regime, no maintenance obliga - tions, no intestate succession and no tax privilege. Opposite-sex and same-sex partners are on the same footing in this respect. The vetoed 2026 legislation described in 9.2 Same-Sex Marriage would have cre - ated a notarial cohabitation agreement with defined mutual rights; its failure leaves the field governed by private law. The few statutory recognitions of factual cohabitation are narrow but not trivial – notably the cohabitant’s statutory succession to a tenancy of the shared dwelling on the tenant’s death. On separation or death, the property affairs of cohab - itants are resolved under general law – unjust enrich - ment, co-ownership and, occasionally, analogies to partnership – which is unpredictable and dependent on evidence; courts decline to apply the matrimonial regime by analogy. Planning therefore substitutes contract for status: express co-ownership shares on acquisition, written arrangements governing contribu - tions and loans, wills and vindicatory legacies with the group III tax cost priced in, life insurance desig - nations, and mutual powers of attorney. For substan - tial estates, the comparison between lifetime giving (taxed at group III rates as values accrue) and trans - fer on death (taxed once, with the zachowek overlay) should be modelled explicitly; there is no equivalent of the spousal exemptions to fall back on. Charitable giving is encouraged primarily through income tax. Individuals may deduct donations to organisations pursuing public benefit purposes, and donations for religious worship, up to 6% of income, with a parallel 10% limit under corporate income tax; donations to the charitable and care activity of church legal persons are deductible without limit under the church statutes, a distinctive feature of the Polish sys - tem. In addition, every taxpayer may direct 1.5% of their personal income tax to a chosen public benefit 10. Charitable Planning 10.1 Charitable Giving
organisation – a designation, not a deduction, which has become the financial backbone of the Polish third sector. On the receiving side, the inheritance and donation tax applies only to natural persons, so that bequests and gifts to charitable legal persons fall outside its scope entirely; the recipient organisation’s income, includ - ing donations and legacies, is exempt from corporate income tax in so far as it is applied to statutory pur - poses within the privileged public-benefit catalogue. Estate planning for philanthropic clients accordingly favours direct bequests to charitable entities, which pass free of transfer tax and reduce the estate subject to family taxation, while lifetime giving is calibrated against the deduction limits on a year-by-year basis. 10.2 Common Charitable Structures The foundation is the default vehicle: created by notarial deed (or by will) with freely determined capital, registered in the National Court Register, governed by a management board without members, and super - vised lightly by the competent minister. Its advantages are permanence, donor control through the statute and eligibility for the tax exemptions described above; its costs are accounting and reporting obligations and, where the founder seeks the 1.5% designation and the widest reliefs, the additional audit and transparen - cy burdens of public benefit organisation status. The association, by contrast, is member-governed and democratic, suited to causes carried by a commu - nity rather than by a donor, and correspondingly less attractive where a family wishes to retain direction. Poland has no charitable trust and no developed market in donor-advised funds, although endowment- style giving is increasingly arranged through dedicat - ed funds administered by established foundations. The family foundation is not a charitable vehicle – its purposes are private – but it is becoming the engine of structured family philanthropy, holding the family’s capital and funding a parallel charitable foundation through its distributions or through donations budg - eted within the family’s overall plan; for families using the lump-sum regime for new residents, the mandato - ry qualifying expenditure described in the Trends and Developments chapter is naturally channelled through precisely such a charitable foundation.
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