A word of caution to any Poles thinking of retiring in Poland, on overeas pension funds. Having retuned to Poland 6 years ago, earlier this year I activated a private pension plan in Canada. The fund had sent me a statement sayig clearly, that since I no longer reside in Canada, Income Tax deduction is being made against each monthly payment transfer. Now, enter the latest ruling by Poland's parliament called: Ustawa o Podwojnym Opodatkowaniu", and my bank PKO, cloaking themselves into a proxy of Inland Revenue, have gone ahead "removing" sizable chunks of money from my monthly transfers, describing them as ' Zaliczka do Podatku Dochodowego', and (.wait for this) 'Health Insurance'. I am now 2000zl short of what was sent to me from the Canadian fund, and no amount of remonstration and documentation presented to PKO Warsaw has been enough to persuade PKO to return the money. It seems that the ruling has resulted in banks doing exactly what the ruling sought to prevent. Which is to charge Income Tax in both countries. In the process of communicating with PKO over this, I have also found two other peculiarities about Polish banking. One is that nobody in PKO Warsaw is capable of reading documents in English, requesting that each page from Canada be translated by a sworn translator ($$$). Second, I found that PKO Warsaw follow policies which local PKO branches openly admit being totally oblivious to. The same, by the way, applies to Inland Revenue offices. At no point was authorisation requested from me, from either Urzad Skarbowy, or PKO, giving them permission that PKO should extract money from my personal account at will, acting as an Inland Revenue agent.
I wonder if anyone in this forum has any knowledge of such things happening in Poland.
I wonder if anyone in this forum has any knowledge of such things happening in Poland.