Lease of property copyrights to the trademark – tax implications

On November 8, 2019 The Supreme Administrative Court in the case ref. Act: II FSK 3715/17 issued a judgment in which it ruled that remuneration received under a property copyright lease agreement should be counted as revenue directly obtained under the lease agreement, regardless of the fact that the subject matter of the agreement is property copyright and not goods.

The above judgment was based on the facts in which the creator of the trademark (logotype) undertook, on the basis of a lease agreement, to give the company under commercial law the copyrights covering the use of this trademark for lease, i. e. to use them and collect benefits from them, in exchange for payment of a monthly rent.

In the above mentioned facts, doubts have arisen as to whether the cash benefit received by the rightholder constitutes rental income as defined in Article 10(1)(6) of the Act of July 26, 1991 on Personal Income Tax (hereinafter: the PIT Act), or income from property rights as defined in Art. 10 section 1 point 7 of the PIT Act.

The Supreme Administrative Court explained that the classification of revenue depends on determining what is its direct source. Therefore, since the property rights to the trademark were leased and it was the lease agreement that was the basis for the rent paid, which constitutes the copyright owner’s revenue, this revenue should be qualified under Article 10 (1) point 6 of the PIT Act, because in this case the property law is only an indirect source of income.

In the following report on taxation according to the tax scale from Art. 27 section 1 of the PIT Act, but it is the subject of a flat-rate taxation on transactions recorded pursuant to art. PIT Act.