All ostensible actions taken in business entail legal risks. This also pertains to using employee outsourcing. Until now, the main risks associated with ostensible outsourcing were linked to employee claims, problems posed by the ZUS Social Insurance Institution or the State Labor Inspection Service. The recent judgment handed down by the District Court in Zduńska Wola on 27 February 2020 shows that the dangers do not end there.   

The District Court examined a case in which as a result of the ostensible transfer of a work establishment, one company rendered services to another company with the intermediation of the acquired employees.

The companies executed an agreement to transfer all of the employees and then a service provision agreement was executed. In practice, the employees continued to do what they had done up until then, under the same management, albeit not on the basis of a direct employment relationship but with the intermediation of their new employer. 

The District Court ruled that the service agreement was invalid. It challenged the invoices issued by the new employer for the activities performed by its employees. It ruled that the transfer had not taken place and therefore the invoices had been issued groundlessly.

The District Court ruled that the representative of the service recipient (i.e. the original employer) was guilty, among other things, of providing untrue data in tax declarations and causing a risk of VAT tax receivables being reduced and of keeping account ledgers inaccurately, and for that it punished that person with a fine of PLN 9,600.
 

Find more in the PRO HR August 2021.