HWW law firm brings revocation of dimensional decisions before WSA

The law firm HWW Hewelt Wojnowski Lindner and Partners has achieved significant success before the Provincial Administrative Court in Warsaw in a complex dispute over the right to deduct VAT on the purchase of consulting services. The case, which had been pending for many years on an emergency basis, concerned the tax authorities’ questioning of the accuracy of invoices documenting specialized IT and business support. The WSA in Warsaw fully shared the Firm’s arguments, overturning the decisions unfavorable to the taxpayer and pointing to a number of gross procedural violations committed by the appeals authority.

A multi-year battle for the resumption of proceedings

The course of the proceedings in this case was extremely complex and required great determination and procedural consistency from the HWW Law Firm team. The original unfavorable final decision was made back in 2017, but thanks to the identification of new evidence in the form of archived email correspondence, the Law Firm initiated an extraordinary procedure for the resumption of the proceedings in December 2018. In the following years, the case was repeatedly reviewed by authorities of both instances and twice went before the Regional Administrative Court. Despite successive rulings overturning the decisions of the fiscal, the appellate body still refused to change its position on the merits.

Arbitrary evaluation of evidence by tax authorities

The crux of the dispute was the fiscal’s classification of invoices for consulting services as documenting activities that allegedly did not take place. The authority based its thesis mainly on the testimony of lower-level employees who had no knowledge of the involvement of an external expert. HWW has consistently shown that such argumentation ignores the peculiarities of the functioning of large project teams, where key strategic advice takes place at the board level, often without the knowledge of those in lower positions. A key piece of evidence in the case was extensive email correspondence, which unequivocally confirmed the advisor’s substantive input on ongoing projects.

Final triumph and repeal of dimensional decisions

The culmination of this long-running legal battle is the verdict of the Voivodship Administrative Court in Warsaw on February 17, 2026, ref. III SA/Wa 1876/25. The court, fully sharing our position, overturned the unfavorable decisions regarding the refusal to renew proceedings. What’s more, however, the Court also decided to revoke the original assessment decisions of 2016 and 2017, which had been the source of a long-standing dispute. This settlement definitively confirms that the evidence gathered by the Firm was sufficient to challenge the fiscal’s earlier findings.

Limits of free evaluation of evidence vs. the principle of trust

A key element of the Firm’s argument, fully shared by the Court, was to demonstrate the close connection between Article 191 and Article 121 of the Tax Ordinance. According to Article 191 of the Tax Ordinance, the authority is obliged to assess whether a circumstance has been proven on the basis of all the collected material, which must be done freely and not arbitrarily. In the present case, the Firm proved that the authority violated this obligation by taking a selective and profligate approach to the evidence, which directly hit the principle expressed in Article 121, paragraph 1 of the Tax Code of the Republic of Poland, of conducting proceedings in a manner that inspires confidence in the tax authorities. The court affirmed that the fair implementation of the principle of free evaluation of evidence is a prerequisite for maintaining the citizen’s trust in the state, and that ignoring evidence favorable to the taxpayer is a blatant denial of these standards

Obligation to respect the court’s guidelines and the principle of trust

In the course of the proceedings, the firm also raised the charge of violating Article 153 of the P.p.s.a., pointing out that the adjudicating authority once again ignored the earlier legal assessment and the court’s instructions on the need to carefully analyze the content of the emails. The tax administration, instead of reliably addressing the evidence presented, contented itself with arbitrary statements that the correspondence did not confirm the scope of the services, despite the fact that it itself admitted that the correspondence concerned IT issues and was conducted on dates close to the issuance of invoices. The WSA found that such action by the authority constituted an impermissible “ex cathedra” ruling and violated the fundamental principle of deepening citizens’ trust in the state.

Effective protection of taxpayer interests and the importance of precedent

Thanks to the HWW law firm’s litigation strategy, the court confirmed that the tax authority does not have complete discretion in evaluating evidence. The ruling is significant for the intangible services industry, as it allows email correspondence as full-fledged evidence of service performance. The court stressed that when the evidence raises doubts that cannot be removed, the authority should apply the principle of in dubio pro tributario and resolve them in favor of the taxpayer, which was lacking in this case.

Expert support in tax disputes

The success in this case is the result of years of commitment by the HWW law firm’s tax team. This case is another example of the Law Firm’s effectiveness in defending taxpayers’ rights in the clash with the strict and often unjustified approach of the tax authorities.

The law firm’s team responsible for handling the case

The following were responsible for handling the case on the law firm’s side:

• Mikolaj Hewelt – attorney, tax advisor, restructuring advisor, partner,
• Matthew Kowalski – legal counselor, tax advisor,
• Piotr Magda – legal counsel.