- BP Translation Conferences

23% VAT on all sales

All ticket sales are subject to a 23% Polish VAT.

In line with article 53 of the European Union’s VAT directive, the place of delivery of in-person events is the country where the event takes place.

Also, the reverse charge mechanism cannot be applied, which means that you must pay VAT even if you purchase your ticket as a company.

The good news is that you can claim back this VAT amount if your company has an EU VAT number, or if you are based in a handful of other countries (including the UK and Switzerland).

How to claim back VAT

You can claim back the VAT amount if your company is based in the EU (but not in Poland) and you have a valid EU VAT number.

The process involves filling in a field in your periodic VAT return, or submit a VAT refund request to your local tax authority.

You can find a detailed description of the VAT refund process in your country by using this prompt with ChatGPT:

My company is based in Italy, and I bought a ticket to a business conference in Poland. The ticket includes VAT, and my company has a European VAT number. How can I claim VAT refund on this purchase?

(Replacing ‘Italy’ with your country)

You can also request VAT refund if your company is based in any of the following countries:

Iceland, North Macedonia, Norway, Switzerland, United Kingdom

The procedure is more complicated than for EU countries. Use the above prompt with ChatGPT to get a detailed description.

If your company is based outside the EU, unfortunately you are not eligible for a VAT refund. You can write off the gross amount as a business expense.

You cannot claim back the VAT amount if you purchased your ticket as an individual, no matter where you are.

Invoicing

Since the event takes place in Poland this year, we need to comply with Polish regulations. We use a Polish invoicing software that’s integrated with our WooCommerce shop.

However, not everything is fully automated. Here’s the workflow:

Card payment

You’ll receive an automatically generated invoice right after your purchase. This will have to be manually replaced by a ‘prepayment invoice’, and the automatically generated ‘invoice’ will be cancelled in our system.

Please use only the ‘prepayment invoice’ for accounting purposes. (The document issued must be called a ‘prepayment invoice’ because it refers to a service that will be provided in the future.)

Bank transfer

You’ll receive an automatically generated pro forma invoice that includes the necessary details for your bank transfer.

Once your payment is confired, we’ll manually convert the document into a ‘prepayment invoice’, and you’ll receive this by email.

Remote tickets

Please fill in the form above, under ‘Register for remote attendance’. All invoices will be handled manually for the time being. The VAT treatment of remote tickets is different from in-person tickets.