How to recover 43,240 PLN in overpaid tax in 4 months
In March 2024, Mr. Dariusz, the owner of a local transport company, came to our office at 104 Piotrkowska Street in Łódź. He brought with him two bulging binders of invoices and one simple question: is it possible to pay lower taxes when fuel prices at stations are hitting 7 PLN? Simply put, Mr. Dariusz felt that money was slipping through his fingers, even though his 9 trucks regularly ran routes to Lyon and Berlin.
Lost money on foreign invoices
Most entrepreneurs in Poland, especially those in the transport sector, accept fuel invoices from abroad as a necessary evil. They pay net plus the tax applicable in a given country, write it off as an expense, and forget about the matter. Mr. Dariusz had been doing this for 7 years. He did not know that, according to the letter of EU law, part of the excise duty and VAT paid abroad can be recovered directly to the company's account in Poland. We count every penny, so we started our work by carefully recalculating 147 invoices from the period from January to December 2023. Every liter refueled in Germany or France contains fees that, with the appropriate procedure, return to the company owner's wallet.
The analysis showed that Mr. Dariusz's company left exactly 43,240 PLN at foreign stations that no one had ever claimed. In the transport industry, where margins fluctuate around 4.2%, such an amount is often the net profit from two months of work of all nine road sets. Concrete results, not promises – that was our slogan when we showed Mr. Dariusz an Excel table with the calculated refund. The client was skeptical because he believed that any attempt to recover money from the state would end in a detailed tax audit that would paralyze his company for many weeks.
43,240 PLN is often for a transport company the equivalent of the net profit from two months of work of the entire fleet of vehicles.
Procedure without the risk of a tax audit
The biggest myth in Polish business is the belief that a tax refund is an invitation for officials to sift through the entire company. In reality, the procedure for recovering foreign VAT (VAT-REF) and excise duty takes place through data exchange between the tax systems of EU countries. If the documents are properly prepared, no one comes to the office in Łódź to check the odometers in the trucks. In Mr. Dariusz's case, we had to verify whether each invoice contained the vehicle's registration number and whether the buyer's tax ID (NIP) was correct. One mistake on a document from a French Total station could void the refund for the entire refueling, which was about 2,450 PLN.
According to the letter of the law, we sent the application electronically on April 12, 2024. The key was grouping the invoices by country and tax rates. At Horyzont Finansowy, we know that an official in Berlin or Paris does not like chaos. If they receive a transparent list with legible scans of invoices, the refund decision is made faster. In this case, the process lasted exactly 112 days. We don't use words about lightning-fast action here, because EU procedures have their rigid time frames that cannot be bypassed without knowledge of specific implementing regulations.
An official in Berlin does not like chaos. Legible scans of invoices are 87% of the success in the money recovery process.
Real impact on financial liquidity
The money began flowing into Mr. Dariusz's company account in three tranches. The first transfer of 12,180 PLN appeared in mid-July. For a small transport company, such cash means security. It allowed for the payment of leasing installments for two new tractor-units without the need for a working capital loan, which at that time would have cost the company an additional 9.4% per year. Simply put, the recovered money not only increased profit but also actually lowered the costs of financing the business. Mr. Dariusz stopped fearing foreign routes because he already knew how to calculate the actual cost of fuel after deducting future refunds.
The last part of the amount, the remaining 31,060 PLN, arrived in the account in August 2024. The entire operation took us less than 4 months. During this time, the client did not have to visit any office even once. Our role was limited to preparing full documentation and monitoring the status of applications in EU systems. It is worth noting that our remuneration was dependent on success, which is a fair deal in business relations. Thanks to this, Mr. Dariusz was sure that we would fight for every euro shown on his invoices, because we count every penny as carefully as our clients.
How to prepare your company for a refund in 2025
If your company sends cars abroad, you can start preparations to recover money today. The first step is to segregate invoices according to the date of issue. Remember that deadlines in tax law are inexorable – if you miss the deadline, the money is forfeited to a foreign state budget. At Horyzont Finansowy, we recommend checking documents every quarter. This avoids a pile-up of work at the end of the year and feeds the company budget faster with cash that would otherwise sit idle in foreign tax office accounts.
For companies from Łódź and the surrounding area, we have prepared a simple audit that takes about 47 minutes. During this time, we review 15-20 randomly selected invoices and are able to determine with 96% accuracy how much money can be extracted from the system. This is concrete results, not promises. You don't have to sign long contracts to start. Just show us your fuel expenses from the last year. If it turns out that the refund is less than 1,200 PLN, we will honestly tell you that the game is not worth the candle due to administrative costs. But in most cases, even with 3-4 vehicles, the refund amounts surprise the owners themselves.
We will honestly tell you if the refund is too low to be worth launching the entire procedure.
