Abstract

The article concerns the issue of correcting invoices acclaimed by tax authorities or duty and tax control authorities as empty within the meaning of article 108 of the act on VAT. The very rich factual states show that the concept of an empty invoice does not exclusively relate to invoices non-documenting an economic event, but sometimes, it also involves invoices that include certain mistakes of lesser importance regarding, e.g. the name ofentity issuing the invoice or deriving from a dispute on an explanation of a regulation. Starting with presenting the concept, the authors pointed out numerous court judgements of whichthe analysis indicates evolution of approach of Polish administrative courts regarding the issue to correctthe so-called empty invoices.The change of approach was inspired by judgments of CJEU. However, the possibility to correct an invoice is a very formalized process and it requires removing the risk of depleting a charge of national budget in this virtue. The article attempts to evaluate the criterion of “irrevocable depletion of budget charge” from the point of view of evaluating the possibility to correct an empty invoicefor which in practice the decisive point seems to be the awareness of an issuer regarding culpability or illegality of his behavior.