Journal of Business Law 12/2020

The subject of this article is the prohibition of excessive delay in payment introduced as of 1 January 2020 to the Act of 8 March 2013 on payment deadlines in commercial transactions (after amendment - the Act on combating late payment in commercial transactions). The author analyzes the sources of justification for this prohibition as well as the subjective and objective scope of it. The purpose of this paper is to determine whether the legal structure of the prohibition may allow to achieve the intention, which is to combat late payment in commercial transactions.

Proceeding on excessive delays in payments in commercial transactions is a new proceeding conducted by the Competition and Consumer Protection Authority in Poland (which is the President of the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection). Its purpose is to improve the legal environment for commercial transactions by reducing excessive delays in payments. The aim of the article is to describe the legal basis of the proceedings and to indicate the characteristic features of the solutions adopted. It refers especially to initiation, duration and termination of the proceedings and the competences and decisions of the conducting authority.

Delays in payment may constitute a serious barrier to the business activity of the entrepreneur. Therefore, it is necessary to find a normative solution to this problem. Pursuant to the Act amending certain acts on reducing payment gridlocks a system for enforcing payment within a fixed period will be introduced. This is to improve the current regulatory environment in which parties to commercial transactions operate. The main purpose of the Act is helping entrepreneurs who do not receive their due payment on time. New regulations will also provide that payment terms in transactions between entrepreneurs will be shortened. The act amending certain acts on reducing payment gridlocks became effective on 1 January 2020. The study tends to answer the questions — how is the control carried out in the course of proceedings on combating excessive late payment in commercial transactions? In addition, it contains comments and evaluations. Study of the outlined problems was mainly based on the dogmatic and legal method.

This article presents one of the amendments to provisions contained in the Act on combating late payment in commercial transactions (the title after the amendments) that have come into effect on 1.01.2020, that is the introduction of the legal framework for fines for excessive delays in payment imposed by the President of UOKiK. The aim of the article is to examine what statutory provisions are applicable to these fines and present what doubts might emerge as a result of their application.

The purpose of the article is to interpret art. 13v section 10 of the Act of 8.03.2013 on counteracting excessive delays in commercial transactions in the context of the issue of judicial control of the action and omissions of the President of the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection within the framework of the proceedings on excessive delays in the performance of cash benefits. By making a pro-constitutional interpretation of this provision, the author came to the conclusion that not only the decisions of the President of the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection, but also other forms of action of this administrative body taken within the framework of proceedings on excessive delay in the provision of financial benefits, as well as its inactivity and protracted conduct of these proceedings are subject to the control of the administrative court.

The article aims to analyse selected legal changes introduced by the Act amending certain acts to reduce payment gridlocks. The aforementioned act introduced into the income tax laws the relief for bad debts. The creditor has been given the opportunity to reduce the tax base by the amount of the claim, if this claim has not been settled or disposed of in any form within 90 days from the date of its payment specified in the contract or invoice. The debtor was obliged to add the amount of the unpaid liability to the tax base, if the liability has not been settled within 90 days from the date of expiry of the payment deadline specified in the invoice (bill) or contract. The regulations introduce a catalogue of conditions that must be met for the relief mechanism to apply.

In the current legal status, the debt relief procedure is available to natural persons irrespective of whether they are entrepreneurs or do not conduct business activity. The amendment to the provisions of bankruptcy law made on March 24, 2020 also unified the purpose of entrepreneurial and consumer bankruptcy. Therefore, the question maybe asked whether this is a purely editorial procedure or whether it also includes a substantive change. An attempt to aswer this question will be analyzed in this article. The research method used in the analysis of the subject will be the formal, dogmatic and historical method.

The article discusses changes in the provisions regarding the delivery of letters addressed to entrepreneurs under civil proceedings. The Code of Civil Procedure has been amended in this respect by the Act of 4.07.2019 amending the Act — Code of Civil Procedure and some other acts (Journal of Laws of 2019, item 1469). The article focuses in particular on the issue of the admissibility of using the fiction of delivery (serve by default) of the first letter in a case addressed to the entrepreneur. In addition to discussing the new regulation on delivery, the aim of the article is to present proposals for changes in the said document in the area primarily concerning entrepreneurs.