Tax preferences for the innovative companies

Poland is going down in the rankings of innovativeness. After a two-year period of being in the group of moderate innovators, it dropped to the weakest group of modest innovators, and ranked 24th in the Innovation Union Scoreboard 2013. The weakness of Polish innovation system is caused mainly by weak engagement of enterprises in innovation activity. This is especially true for Small and Medium Enterprise Sector. Relation of R&D expenditures to GNP was only about 0.77% in Poland and constituted only a third of GERD/GNP for the 27 State Members of European Union (over 2%). Tax preferences were set in the Polish law in order to support enterprises' innovative activity. They include: tax reductions on purchases of new technologies, the status of Research and Development Center, and technological credit. The analysis is aimed at evaluating the effectiveness of tax preferences in Poland against other countries of the region and giving an estimation of impact of tax instruments on innovative activity of companies.