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Article 33a of the Polish VAT Act is the Polish model of postponed VAT accounting, allowing import VAT to be settled in the VAT return instead of at customs clearance. Using aggregated data for 2020–2024, the article analyses the scale, commodity structure and control significance of this mechanism. The results show that it covered about one quarter of Poland’s imports and was concentrated mainly in industrial, raw-material and technological goods. It should therefore be viewed both as a liquidity tool and as an important area of customs and tax risk profiling.
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