On EU companies outside the Eurozone paying taxes in France and the interpretation of Regulation (EU) No 260/2012  

The petitioner has noticed diverging interpretations between France and Poland of Regulation (EU) No 260/2012 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 14 March 2012 establishing technical and business requirements for credit transfers and direct debits in euro and amending Regulation (EC) 924/2009. According to the French tax office for foreign companies (SIEE), since 1 November 2016 all Polish banks have been required to offer clients SEPA B2B services (an automatic payment method used for paying one-off or recurrent invoices to creditors whose debtors are professionals). This means that Polish companies carrying out taxable operations in France and liable for VAT shall be penalised as of 1 February 2018 – the date on which the French tax authorities have decided to apply penalties to all companies that do not pay their taxes via this mechanism. According to the National Bank of Poland, Article 3(2) of the Regulation does not apply to all payment service providers; presently only four Polish banks offer the service, as not all of them have the technical capacity to meet the requirements of the French authorities. The petitioner would like to know which interpretation of Regulation (EU) 260/2012 – the French or the Polish – is correct.