The assumptions for the draft act amending the Act on the Agricultural Protection Fund and certain other acts were recently published.
Let us remind that according to the current Act on the Agricultural Protection Fund, a fee must be paid to this fund (0.125% of the net purchase value).
It was imposed on entities purchasing, storing, processing or processing agricultural products that are VAT payers, where for the purposes of the levy “agricultural products” were understood as in Annex I to the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, so their scope would include, among others: meat, fish, dairy products, vegetable fats and animal fats, margarine, malt, vegetables or fruit.
At the same time, the purpose of establishing the Fund is to secure buyers of agricultural products in the event of insolvency (due to bankruptcy).
What is proposed is:
- reduction of the fee from 0.125% to 0.07% of the value of purchased net agricultural products;
- limiting the submitted declarations and the deadline for paying the amounts due to the Fund account to annual declarations and one-off payments to the account by 31 January of the year following the settlement year;
- abandonment of the imposition of penalties for failure to submit declarations (with simultaneous amnesty for penalties for late submission of declarations for the first and second quarters of 2024). Sanctions in the form of administrative penalties will apply only to failure to submit the lists referred to in Article 11 sec. 1 of the Act on time.
Currently, the work is being carried out at the level of the Ministries of Agriculture and Rural Development. It is planned that the draft will be adopted by the Council of Ministers later this quarter.
