Tax Disputes Concerning Seafarers’ Settlements
The fact that the correct classification of services performed by a vessel is far from straightforward is confirmed by the judgment of the Regional Administrative Court (WSA) in Szczecin of 13 April 2023, in case I SA/Sz 918/22. The dispute was initiated by the taxpayer’s application for limitation of advance income tax payments for 2022.
The tax authority refused. In the authority’s view, the vessel on which the taxpayer worked sailed on European inland waters, in particular those of the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium and France. The appeal filed by the taxpayer was also unsuccessful.
The appellate authority explained that the condition of performing work outside the land territory of states is set out in Art. 27g(5) of the PIT Act. The administrative court disagreed with the tax authority’s position. In the view of the WSA in Szczecin, the authorities’ reasoning led to the absurd conclusion that individuals actually performing work in international transport on inland waters were working on land. The WSA held that since such work is no different from that performed by seafarers on other waters, it cannot be inferred that a person working on such a vessel earns income from work on land and is not entitled to the same rights as other seafarers.
The cited judgment, favourable to seafarers, is not final. Similarly, the judgment of the WSA in Gdańsk of 17 January 2024 in case I SA/Gd 984/23 endorsed the tax authority’s position that the unit on which the seafarer sailed was not operated in international transport. The vessel was conclusively classified as a coastal support vessel (tug), a supply ship servicing drilling platforms.
NSA Judgment of 15 December 2025 (II FSK 785/22, Seven-Judge Panel) – Payment of Tax Abroad Does Not Condition Applicability of a Treaty
Of major significance for disputes over the taxation of seafarers is the NSA judgment of 15 December 2025 (II FSK 785/22), delivered by a seven-judge panel. The NSA held that neither the arising of a tax liability in the other Contracting State nor the question of actual payment of tax by the Polish taxpayer in that state condition the applicability of a double taxation treaty. It is sufficient that the income “may be taxed” within the meaning of the convention.
The judgment ends a longstanding dispute in which tax authorities made the application of methods for the avoidance of double taxation – and consequently abolition relief – conditional on the occurrence of effective taxation abroad. The NSA found this interpretation to be incorrect and issued a signalling order to the Minister of Finance, pointing to the divergence of positions between the Ministry and the territorial tax administration authorities (Directors of Tax Administration Chambers).
The judgment is of significance primarily for seafarers whose income satisfies the treaty conditions – i.e., those working on vessels operated in international transport by an enterprise of a Contracting State. It does not, however, change the situation of offshore seafarers working on vessels that are not recognised as operated in international transport – in their case the convention does not apply for a different reason (absence of the transport condition, discussed below).
Nor does the judgment change the position in treaty-free situations, where the general tax ruling of the Minister of Finance (No. DD4.8201.1.2019) continues to require actual payment of tax abroad as a condition for abolition relief.
NSA Judgment of 29 January 2026 (II FSK 702/23) – FPSO Is Not International Transport
Of landmark significance for disputes over the classification of offshore units is the NSA judgment of 29 January 2026 (II FSK 702/23). The NSA held that a floating production system – despite being classified as an other cargo ship – does not participate in international transport within the meaning of Art. 3(1)(f) and Art. 14(3) of the Polish-Norwegian Convention.
The NSA emphasised that the classification of an activity as “transport” is determined by the principal purpose of the vessel’s operations. The judgment continues an established line of NSA case law, encompassing judgments from 2019, 2022, 2025 and 2026.
For seafarers working on FPSO, FSO, FLNG units, cable-laying vessels, pipe-laying vessels and research vessels, the prospects for a favourable resolution of a dispute with the tax authorities regarding transport classification are currently very limited. This does not, however, preclude an individual analysis of the specific facts.
WSA Gdańsk Judgment of 4 February 2026 (I SA/Gd 935/25) – Seismic Vessel and Absence of a Conflict of Taxing Claims
A week after the NSA’s FPSO judgment, the WSA in Gdańsk dismissed the complaint of a seafarer working on a seismographic vessel. The court not only confirmed that a research vessel does not participate in international transport but held that a double taxation treaty does not apply at all where there is no conflict of taxing claims between two states.
It should be noted that the WSA’s thesis regarding the necessity of a conflict of claims as a condition for the treaty’s applicability remains in tension with the earlier NSA judgment of 15 December 2025 (II FSK 785/22, seven-judge panel), in which the court held that actual arising of a tax liability abroad does not condition the applicability of the convention. This divergence would not, however, have changed the outcome of the seismic vessel case – regardless of the position adopted on the payment condition, the vessel was not operated in international transport and therefore the treaty conditions were not satisfied.
The court also rejected the argument that Art. 27g(5) constitutes a standalone basis for the relief. The judgment is not final.
WSA Gdańsk Judgment of 18 February 2026 (I SA/Gd 951/25) – Defeat on Procedural Grounds
In February 2026, the WSA in Gdańsk dismissed the complaint of a seafarer whose facts – a Cyprus-flagged vessel, international shipping, carriage of cargo, UK management – gave potential grounds for either a PIT exemption or abolition relief.
The seafarer lost not on substantive law but on procedure. In his application for limitation of advance payments he relied solely on Art. 21(1)(23c) of the PIT Act (PIT exemption), without demonstrating the probability that its conditions were met. When, at the appeal stage, he attempted to change the basis to Art. 27g (abolition relief), the court held that the taxpayer’s application defines the scope of the proceedings – and a change at the appeal stage is inadmissible
Robert Nogacki is a Polish attorney at law (radca prawny), the founder and managing partner of Kancelaria Prawna Skarbiec (Skarbiec Law Firm), which has operated continuously since 2006.
The law is equal for everyone, but the parties rarely are: on one side stands an organization with time, money, and lawyers, on the other a person with one business, one nest egg, and one life.
Clients rarely come to him with a legal problem. They come with a problem that also has a legal side: an audit that began with a single invoice, money entrusted to someone who has disappeared, a company that has to be passed on before it is too late. Most such matters are decided long before the first letter is written, in decisions made without asking and in deadlines nobody remembered. So he begins by asking how the client got here, not what the client should have done.
He advises entrepreneurs and families from more than a dozen countries, including those whose accounts the tax office has just seized and who do not know what to do tomorrow morning. He defends them in tax audits, customs and fiscal inspections, disputes with the tax authorities, and criminal tax proceedings. He represents victims of investment fraud and Ponzi schemes. He helps families set up family foundations and plan succession, so that a life’s work outlasts a single generation.
Not every case can be won. Every case can be run so that the client knows where they stand. Since 2006 he has represented the victims in the WGI case (Warszawska Grupa Inwestycyjna, the Warsaw Investment Group), one of the longest criminal cases in the history of the Polish financial market, because some things must not be left half finished, even when they take two decades. In the case of the collapsed cryptocurrency exchange Zonda (Zondacrypto, operated by BB Trade Estonia OÜ), he represents several hundred victims in the criminal investigation conducted by Poland’s National Prosecutor’s Office and in the Estonian bankruptcy proceedings.
Kancelaria Prawna Skarbiec is listed in the rankings of Poland’s largest tax advisory firms published by Dziennik Gazeta Prawna and Rzeczpospolita, and it is a four-time recipient (2015 to 2018) of the European Medal awarded by the Business Centre Club and the European Economic and Social Committee. Robert Nogacki publishes regularly, in the press and on the firm’s website, for people who have a problem rather than a law degree, because a legal opinion the client cannot understand protects only the lawyer.
He believes that the best legal advice is the kind that means the client never has to appear in court.
