VAT in Poland: The Complete Guide for a Foreign-Owned Company

Polish VAT is not unusual. It is an ordinary EU VAT system with the standard machinery — a registration threshold, four rates, monthly reporting, input tax recovery, reverse charge on cross-border services. What makes it feel unusual to a foreign-owned company is that three of its rules have no obvious equivalent at home, and each of them catches people in the first year.

This is the whole system in one place. Where a topic has its own guide, it is linked.

1. Whether you have to register

The exemption threshold is 240,000 zł of taxable turnover in the year, raised from 200,000 zł with effect from 1 January 2026. Below it, registration is optional.

Three things about that sentence matter more than the number.

It is prorated in your first year. Start trading in October and the threshold for that year is proportional to the days remaining, not the full 240,000 zł. Companies that register late in the year and read the headline figure get this wrong routinely.

Some activities are excluded entirely. Legal and tax advisory services, jewellery, and certain agency and consultancy work cannot use the exemption at all, whatever the turnover — so a one-person consultancy may be required to register from its first invoice.

Voluntary registration is often the right answer anyway. If your customers are businesses, they reclaim the VAT you charge and it costs them nothing, while you recover the VAT on your own purchases. The exemption mainly benefits businesses selling to consumers.

The full decision, including the exclusions, is in our VAT registration guide, and the VAT registration checker will give you a verdict from six questions.

2. The rates

23% standard. 8% on a defined list including certain construction and renovation work, passenger transport and some foodstuffs. 5% on basic foods, books and periodicals. 0% on exports and intra-Community supplies of goods, which is a rate rather than an exemption — meaning you still recover your input tax.

The distinction between the 0% rate and an exemption is the one that costs money: exempt activity does not carry input-tax recovery, so an exempt business bears the VAT on its own purchases as a cost.

3. Monthly reporting: JPK_V7

There is no separate VAT return. Poland merged the return and the records into a single structured file, JPK_V7, filed monthly (or quarterly for those eligible), by the 25th of the following month. Payment falls on the same date.

Two consequences for a foreign-owned company:

Your invoice data is the return. Because the file contains records rather than totals, an inconsistency between what you booked and what your counterparty booked becomes visible without anyone auditing you. Errors surface faster than they used to.

Some transactions require markers. Certain goods and services, and certain relationships — including transactions with related parties — must be flagged in the file. Omitting a marker is a correction, not a rounding difference.

4. Cross-border, which is where the questions actually are

Selling services to a business in another EU country. Generally the customer accounts for the VAT under reverse charge and you invoice without Polish VAT, subject to having their valid VAT number and reporting the transaction. This is the single most common Polish VAT question we receive, and the answer usually turns on whether the customer is genuinely a taxable person.

Selling goods or digital services to EU consumers. Once cross-border distance sales exceed 10,000 EUR across the EU as a whole, you charge the customer’s local rate. The One Stop Shop lets you report all of it through a single Polish return rather than registering in each country — which is worth using before you reach the threshold rather than after.

Buying services from abroad. You self-account under reverse charge. This is not optional and it applies even to a small company buying software subscriptions from a foreign supplier — a very common omission in the first year.

Reclaiming foreign VAT. VAT paid in another EU country on fuel, tolls or hotels is recoverable through a refund procedure with its own annual deadline, which is a separate mechanism from your Polish return.

5. The three that catch foreign-owned companies

Registration is not instant. The tax office verifies the application, and it may ask questions — about your address, your activity, your bank account. Build the time into your plan and make sure the company is genuinely contactable at its registered address, because an unanswered letter is the usual cause of a refusal.

The white list. Poland maintains a public register of VAT payers with their declared bank accounts. Payments above a threshold to an account not on the list can cost the payer the right to treat the expense as deductible. Your customers will check you; you should check your suppliers.

Split payment. For certain goods and services, and above a value threshold, VAT is paid into a dedicated VAT account rather than the supplier’s ordinary one, and the money in it can only be used for defined purposes. It is mandatory in those cases and voluntary elsewhere, and it affects cash flow more than most founders expect.

Where to start

If you have not registered yet, run the registration checker — six questions and a verdict.

If you are already registered and the monthly file is a source of anxiety rather than routine, the problem is almost always upstream in how documents arrive rather than in the filing itself. We prepare and file JPK_V7 for foreign-owned Polish companies in seven languages, and will tell you from one month’s documents where the friction is.