The project was submitted to the Sejm Act amending the Act on Counteracting Excessive Delays in Commercial Transactions and the Act on Public Finances.
Below is a brief description of the solutions included in the project:
- simplification of the obligation to report on payment practices:
- exclusion from the reports of benefits from commercial transactions concluded in the field of insurance and reinsurance activities;
- exclusion of overdue benefits from the reports;
- exclusion from the reports of benefits between companies within one capital group;
- exemption from the reporting obligation for companies belonging to tax capital groups;
- extension of the deadline for submitting the report from 31 January to 30 April;
- clarifying and regulating issues related to the obligation to report on payment practices:
- clarification of the status of the person obliged to submit the report –the reporting obligation rests directly with the entity, while the responsibility for submitting the report by the entity rests with an appropriately defined manager;
- clarifying the concept of the entity's manager, including the regulation that in the case of limited partnerships, the general partner managing the partnership’s affairs is responsible for submitting the company’s report;
- regulating the issue of submitting corrections to the report – it is proposed to indicate explicitly in the provision that if the data in at least one item of the submitted report has changed by at least 10% value, the report should be corrected;
- specifying directly in the Act the exchange rate at which fulfilled/unfulfilled benefits received/not received in currencies should be converted for the purposes of reporting and proceedings in cases of excessive delays;
- specifying the accuracy with which the value of benefits and shares should be reported – it is proposed to specify directly in the Act that the values in the report are given with an accuracy of 1 grosz and hundredths of a percent, respectively;
- changing the method of reporting benefits provided and received;
- changing the method of reporting the value of cash benefits not received and not fulfilled;
- specifying in the Act the deadline for publishing reports in the Public Information Bulletin – it is proposed that the minister responsible for economic affairs publish a summary of reports annually by 31 August;
- improving the effectiveness of proceedings in cases of excessive delays in fulfilling monetary obligations and making the punishment model more flexible:
- changing the rules for penalising excessive delays in the payment of pecuniary benefits by introducing the discretion of the President of the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection in imposing the penalty, together with an indication of the premises/directives for imposing the penalty and a modification of the formula according to which the maximum penalty for excessive delays in the payment of pecuniary benefits will be calculated;
- introducing the institution of so-called "soft calls";
- exclusion of delays within capital groups from the scope of excessive delay proceedings;
- introducing rules for the conversion of cash benefits expressed in foreign currencies;
- other changes:
- the power not to seek compensation from executive agencies;
- imposition the obligation to submit a declaration of status for all large entrepreneurs (currently only large entrepreneurs who are debtors) – it is proposed that the declaration be submitted once in a given business relationship, and an update would be required in the event of a change in status;
- introducing the invalidity of a contractual stipulation prohibiting the creditor from selling the receivable.
The bill assumes that the act will enter into force 14 days after its publication.
The text of the bill in the version submitted to the Sejm is available HERE.