EN
A typical feature of the Polish personal income tax is a cumulative growth of the tax burden on savings over time. Investing in individual pension accounts ‘IKE’ and ‘IKZE’ allows to restrict this unfavourable phenomenon to some extent. This is possible due to a mechanism of tax preferences which are in line with the concepts of savings-adjusted and interest-adjusted income tax broadly discussed in literature. These approaches do not discriminate savings against consumption and fulfil the postulate of inter-period income tax neutrality. The aim of the paper is to answer the question to what extent investing in the accounts ‘IKE’ and ‘IKZE’ complies with the above mentioned tax concepts. In the article, a novel comparative analysis with respect to two aspects is carried out. First, formal rules governing ‘IKE’ and ‘IKZE’, with a particular focus on tax regulations, are compared. As a result, a model is developed which determines the tax effects depending on the type of the account and the way (point in time) funds are withdrawn. Second, some detailed measures introduced in practice are compared against theoretical concepts and postulates. The comparative analysis conducted in the paper reveals that, in general, the tax preferences foreseen for the both types of pension accounts comply with the theoretical income tax concepts which do not distort savings decisions. However, numerous regulations which were introduced in practice lead to a far-reaching restriction of the postulate of non-discrimination of savings against consumption.