The Polish VAT Exemption for Insurance Is Ahead of EU Law

Although the Council of the European Union has never adopted the European Commission’s proposals to amend the VAT treatment of financial services and insurance transactions, the Polish legislator has already transposed the most recent versions of the proposals into the national VAT Act, with effect from 1 January 2011. In this article, the authors discuss the experience in Poland over the past two years with the proposed EU regime for insurance, which illustrates possible weaknesses of that regime.