The Polish government announced that it will initiate the relevant legislative process and plans to impose a tax of up to 3% on income from certain digital services. This move may affect Apple and many other large American technology companies that do business there. According to Reuters, Krzysztof Gawkowski, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Digitalization of Poland, was quoted as saying that this initiative aims to correct the current competitive imbalance in the digital market and put local companies and large multinational digital platforms on a more level playing field.
He pointed out that the existing tax system puts companies that pay taxes and operate in Poland at a disadvantage, while those companies that provide digital services to Poland from abroad enjoy better tax treatment, which weakens the competitiveness of domestic companies, damages digital sovereignty, and significantly reduces the fiscal revenue space that could be reinvested in technological development.
According to the bill currently being conceived, the new tax will apply to three major categories of business: first, targeted online advertising business that relies on user portraits; second, platform services where users conduct social interactions, buying and selling transactions on the platform, and third, income obtained by collecting and selling user data. The tax burden is limited to multinational enterprises above a certain scale: global annual revenue must exceed 1 billion euros, and annual revenue in Poland must exceed 6.79 million US dollars to be included in the scope of taxation.
According to the draft, multiple services provided by Apple in the Polish market may fall into the scope of taxation, including the App Store, Apple Music, Apple TV+, Apple Books, Apple Podcasts, and even its expanding advertising business. However, the draft also sets out a number of exemption clauses. For example, if the “sole or main purpose” of a digital interface is to deliver content that the platform owns or has the right to distribute, or the platform itself is a direct seller rather than an intermediary, it can enjoy exemption treatment. This means that in the future, Apple may try to claim that certain services should apply corresponding exemption clauses based on specific business models and content attributes. However, because the draft leaves a lot of room for interpretation in the wording, there is still uncertainty in the actual implementation.
In addition to Apple, major U.S. technology companies such as Alphabet (the parent company of Google), Meta, and Amazon are also likely to be subject to taxation if the bill is passed according to the current text. It is worth noting that Poland’s push for digital tax legislation comes just months after the withdrawal of a similar digital services tax plan at the EU level, showing that it has chosen to take a more proactive national path in digital tax policy.