This stems from an interpretation issued by the Director of the National Tax Information, who referred to the situation where shares of a joint-stock company are transferred to a family foundation. He concluded that such a mechanism does not create personal income tax or capital gains tax.
Increasing capital without tax risk
How is it possible that transferring company shares to a foundation does not trigger tax obligations? The National Tax Information stated that such an action does not involve the creation of monetary capital, which plainly means that tax on such a transaction is not required. The founder would only have to pay tax if benefits were paid out by the foundation or at the time of its liquidation. Simply funding the foundation does not have tax consequences, as the tax authority indicated this follows directly from the PIT Act. Introducing shares into a family foundation to cover its founding fund is neutral. This means that the founder does not have to pay tax on them, even if the share value is much higher than at the time of acquisition.
What is a family foundation?
The ability to establish family foundations came into effect in 2023. At that time, the ministry encouraged their creation in this way.
“If your future heirs cannot or do not want to run the business, consider creating a family foundation. This solution allows the business to continue without the personal involvement of your legal successors, while protecting the family's assets.” – we read on the business.gov.pl site managed by the Ministry of Development and Technology.
The ministry indicated that a family foundation is a solution that allows building organizational structures and ensuring business continuity and asset protection over a period longer than one generation, without the personal involvement of legal successors. This solution should allow benefits to be provided to its beneficiaries without jeopardizing the integrity of the family assets and the liquidity of the companies in which they hold shares.
This caused the foundation to act as a family vault: it should provide the family with financial resources while realizing the founder's vision and caring for the values adopted by them in business.
It is worth noting that the government at the end of 2025 attempted to change the rules governing family foundations by increasing the possibility of taxing this system of operation, which was intended – according to the legislator – to tighten the system. President Karol Nawrocki vetoed this matter, emphasizing that when family foundations were introduced, the legislator encouraged founders to establish foundations that would operate unchanged for at least three years. The government proposal would have changed the rules mid-game, which Karol Nawrocki did not agree to.
“The reason for the veto is opposition to abandoning the agreement the state made with Poles by introducing this law. When this institution was created, the legislator ensured that its operating principles would not change for three years. Meanwhile, the proposed amendment introduced unfavorable tax changes to already established foundations, to which families had transferred their assets, after barely two years. This violates the principle of trust in the state, whose only reason was the dire state of public finances. The state's goal should be to pursue unscrupulous entities exploiting VAT and evading taxes, not to attack family foundations – we read in the justification on the President's Office website.
See also: Fine amounts are going up sharply. The government wants the minimum penalty to rise from 100 to 1000 PLN!
