Stamp control of real estate sale contracts drawn up before a notary public in the light of the provisions of the Stamp Act of 1926

The Act of July 1, 1926 on stamp duty finally removed the provisions of the partitioning powers from the Polish legal order, eliminating the divergence of the regulations, legislative complexity, uneven treatment of the subject of taxation, and archaic methods of paying the stamp duty. At the same time, until 1933, separate provisions for former Galicia were maintained. As a consequence, we can only talk about the unification of the type of stamp duties charged, while maintaining separate rules for the manner of collecting them. The stamp duty itself was nothing more than a special type of cash benefit collected by the State from all letters confirming legal action and from legal acts not in writing. In order to facilitate the system of collecting stamp duties, the legislator gave the notary public the attribute of an official authority, responsible for its calculation and collection. In view of this solution, the legislator had to introduce a control mechanism that was to disclose situations where such a notary would make an error, by applying an incorrect rate of stamp duty or bypassing the act by the parties to the contract, by indicating to the notary public the value of the subject of the contract which is incompatible with the actual state of affairs from which the stamp duty was charged. In the first case, the taxpayer had practically two options: to agree with the size of the stamp duty presented by the payment order or to lodge an appropriate appeal to the Tax Chamber. It is important that, despite the notary's error, it was the taxpayer himself who had de facto defended the notary's position during the appeal process. On the other hand, underestimating the value of the transaction, that is, knowingly giving a notary a false statement actual state of fact, was already a criminal offence. In both cases, there was a decrease in the State Treasury's income, but the consequences for the taxpayer were different. Despite this, the legislator did not decide to introduce an obligation to present each notary deed of sale, which would allow for a quick verification of both the rate and value of the contract used.