ul. Dywizjonu AK "Jeleń" 7B/U4, WarszawaSole trade, non-EU
Only with the right permit
a closed statutory list decides
Open to everyone
Five company forms
whatever your nationality or status
Minimum capital, sp. z o.o.
PLN 5,000
PLN 1 for a simple joint-stock company
Corporate income tax
19% or 9%
9% for small taxpayers and new companies
E-invoicing
Mandatory since 2026
KSeF: all businesses from 1 April 2026
Holding shares
No work permit
a board seat is a different question
On this page
Who may run which business in Poland
Polish law does not give every foreign national the same commercial freedom. The act on the participation of foreign entrepreneurs in business in Poland sorts people into groups, and the group you fall into decides whether you can trade as a sole trader, or only through certain companies. Nationality decides it for some; for everyone else, the residence title decides it.
| Who you are | What you may do |
|---|---|
| EU, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway | Everything a Polish citizen may do, including a sole trade registered in the business activity register. No residence title is needed for this purpose. |
| Switzerland and the United States | Also every form, but on a different footing: these two are outside the statutory definition of a member state and rely on the proviso for international agreements. The government’s own business portal states the outcome expressly. |
| United Kingdom – residents from before 2021 | Beneficiaries of the withdrawal agreement keep the position they had: treated as EU nationals for business and for work. British nationals who arrived later are third-country nationals. |
| Other nationalities, with a qualifying title | Everything, if you hold one of the titles in the list below. Permanent residence, EU long-term residence, refugee status and a handful of named temporary permits are on it. |
| Other nationalities, everyone else | Five company forms only: limited partnership, limited joint-stock partnership, limited liability company, simple joint-stock company, joint-stock company. You may also join such a company and take up or acquire its shares. |
The two permits people assume are enough, and are not
The list of qualifying titles is closed, and two of the most widely held permits in Poland are absent from it:
The single permit for temporary residence and work. This is the ordinary permit of a foreign national employed in Poland – the most common one there is. It does not let you register a sole trade.
The EU Blue Card. A highly qualified specialist on a Blue Card cannot register a sole trade either, which surprises almost everyone who holds one.
Both groups can still found and own a limited liability company. The practical consequence is a different one: if your plan was to invoice clients as a self-employed contractor, that plan needs a company, and a company brings a board seat, accounts, and the work-authorisation question dealt with further down this page.
There is one more restriction, and it is recent. A third-country national in the five-forms group may own shares, but may not be remunerated through the two constructions that were once used as a substitute for work authorisation: the repeated non-cash services a shareholder can be obliged to provide under the commercial companies code, and work or services exchanged for shares in a simple joint-stock company. Those routes are now expressly closed. If you were told that a shareholder can be paid for services without any work permit, that advice is out of date.
Which residence titles open every form of business
If you are not an EU, EEA, Swiss or US national, this is the list that matters. Hold one of these and you may trade in any form, a sole trade included. Hold anything else and you are in the five-forms group.
| Title or status | Notes |
|---|---|
| Permanent residence permit | The cleanest answer. Full commercial freedom, and no renewal to plan around. |
| EU long-term resident’s permit | Same effect for this purpose as permanent residence. |
| Refugee status, subsidiary protection, temporary protection | All three are on the list, as is a stay permitted on humanitarian grounds or a tolerated stay. |
| Valid Karta Polaka | The card alone is enough; it does not depend on which residence permit you also hold. |
| Any temporary residence permit, if you are married to a Polish citizen living in Poland | The only entry where the ground for the permit does not matter. The marriage and the spouse’s residence in Poland do the work. |
| Temporary residence for university study | Students are on the list. A permit for school education or a language course is not the same thing. |
| Temporary residence for scientific research | Also a former researcher who has finished the project and is looking for work or planning a business. |
| Temporary residence for family reunification | The permit held by a spouse or child joining a foreign national already settled here. |
| EU long-term resident of another member state, now in Poland | Covers the holder and family members who lived with them in that state. |
| Family member of an EU or EEA national | Joining or accompanying them in Poland. |
| Temporary residence for business activity, granted to continue an existing sole trade | Narrow, and worth reading twice: it covers a permit granted because you already have a registered sole trade. It is not a way in for someone starting one. |
A practical note on timing. If your permit is expiring and the renewal is pending, the entitlement does not necessarily lapse – the stamp in the passport can carry it over. But it does so only where the entitlement came from one of the named temporary permits or from the marriage entry. Carrying over any other title does not create a right that was not there to begin with.
Ukrainian nationals under temporary protection have their own, more generous regime, which is not set out on this page. If that is your position, ask us rather than reading across from the table above.
The legal forms, compared
Eleven forms are available for business in Poland, and for a foreign founder the realistic shortlist is usually three: a limited liability company, a simple joint-stock company, or – where the residence title allows it – a sole trade. The table compares all of them on the points that actually decide the choice.
| Form | Minimum capital | Your liability | Online in a day | Tax | Open without a qualifying title |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sole trade jednoosobowa działalność | None | Unlimited, all personal assets | Yes, free of charge | Personal income tax | No |
| Civil partnership spółka cywilna | None | Joint and several, unlimited | No – each partner registers separately | Transparent – partners taxed | No |
| Registered partnership spółka jawna | None | Unlimited, after the firm’s assets | Yes | Transparent by default – see the trap below | No |
| Professional partnership spółka partnerska | None | Not for another partner’s professional work | No | Transparent | No – and only for listed professions |
| Limited partnership spółka komandytowa | None | Limited for the limited partner; unlimited for the general partner | Yes | Corporate income tax since 2021 | Yes |
| Limited joint-stock partnership spółka komandytowo-akcyjna | PLN 50,000 | None for the shareholder; unlimited for the general partner | No – notarial deed | Corporate income tax | Yes |
| Limited liability company spółka z o.o. | PLN 5,000 | None as a shareholder; the board carries its own exposure | Yes, on template articles | Corporate income tax | Yes |
| Simple joint-stock company prosta spółka akcyjna | PLN 1 | None as a shareholder; board exposure as above | Yes | Corporate income tax | Yes |
| Joint-stock company spółka akcyjna | PLN 100,000 | None as a shareholder | No – notarial deed | Corporate income tax | Yes |
| Branch oddział przedsiębiorcy zagranicznego | None | The foreign company is liable in full | No | Taxed as a Polish permanent establishment | Where a treaty allows it |
| Representative office przedstawicielstwo | None | The foreign company | No – a separate ministry register | No business income, so no tax on it | Advertising and promotion only |
“Online in a day” means the electronic company-registration system with template articles, where the registry court is required to deal with the application within one working day. A company set up that way can be amended later by notarial deed; the template is a starting point, not a cage.
A trap in the registered partnership
A registered partnership is tax-transparent, which is usually why it is chosen. But if any partner is not a natural person – a holding company, say – the partnership becomes liable to corporate income tax unless a specific information is filed with the tax office in time: before the start of the tax year, or within fourteen days of registration or of a change in the partners. Miss the deadline and the partnership is a corporate taxpayer for the rest of its existence. There is no application to put it right. This is the single most expensive diary entry in Polish partnership law, and it is missed regularly.
A short description of each form, with the capital, accounting and social-insurance implications, is set out below. For a side-by-side view of two or three forms applied to your actual plan, it is faster to ask – the choice usually turns on one or two facts about your situation rather than on the general features.
Registering a company: steps, fees and timing
A limited liability company set up on the template articles is a short, cheap, electronic process. Everything expensive or slow about company formation in Poland comes from stepping off that path – because the articles need provisions the template does not offer, because a founder cannot sign electronically, or because a filing obligation after registration gets missed.
The sequence
1. Decide the form, and check it against your residence title before anything else. Reversing this later means winding one entity up and founding another.
2. Articles of association – on the template, electronically; or before a Polish notary where the template will not do. Template articles cannot accommodate contributions in kind, share classes with different rights, or most investor protections.
3. File with the register of entrepreneurs. All company filings are electronic; there is no paper route and no counter to hand anything in at.
4. Pay the transaction tax on the articles – 0.5% of the share capital. Where a notary was used, the notary collects it; otherwise the company files and pays within fourteen days.
5. Tax and statistical numbers arrive automatically. No separate application is needed for either.
6. Open the bank account, then notify it to the tax office on the supplementary form, together with the correspondence address. Where the company is a social-insurance contributions payer, that notification is due within seven days of registration.
7. File the beneficial owners within fourteen days of registration, and within fourteen days of every later change.
8. Register for VAT if you need to, and set up electronic invoicing and electronic delivery – both are now compulsory. See tax and compliance.
What it costs
| Item | Amount |
|---|---|
| Registering a sole trade | Free |
| Court fee – company registered on template articles | PLN 250 |
| Court fee – company registered any other way | PLN 500 |
| Court fee – later change to the entry | PLN 200 on a template resolution, otherwise PLN 250 |
| Transaction tax on the articles of association | 0.5% of the share capital – so PLN 25 on the minimum capital of a limited liability company. The notary’s fee and the court fee are deducted from the base. |
| Notarial deed, where one is needed | By tariff, scaled to the capital. Ask for a quotation before committing to a form that requires a deed. |
| Announcement of the entry in the court and commercial gazette | Abolished on 29 November 2025. The old PLN 100 charge no longer applies, and any cost estimate that still includes it is out of date. Announcements the companies code separately requires – liquidation, transformation, merger – are still published and still paid for. |
How long it takes
The registry court is required to deal with an application built on template articles within one working day, and with any other registration application within seven days of receipt. Those are instructional deadlines rather than guarantees, and the real time varies between courts and with how busy they are. We do not publish an average, because no reliable published figure exists. What we can say is that the delays we see are almost never caused by the court: they are caused by a founder who cannot sign, or by articles that were drafted before anyone checked what the plan actually required.
Beneficial owners: fourteen days, and a serious penalty
Every Polish company and registered partnership must report its beneficial owners to the central register within fourteen days of registration, and again within fourteen days of any change. The administrative fine for failing to do so reaches PLN 1,000,000. For a company with foreign shareholders the analysis of who the beneficial owner actually is can be less obvious than it looks, particularly where a corporate shareholder sits in the chain – and the deadline runs while that is being worked out.
On the bank account: no statute requires a business to hold a dedicated company account as such, and transactions below PLN 15,000 between businesses can be settled otherwise. In practice an account in the company’s name is unavoidable, because only business accounts appear on the tax authority’s whitelist of taxpayer accounts. Paying more than PLN 15,000 to an account that is not on that list costs the payer the deduction and can make them jointly liable for the supplier’s VAT, so your counterparties will insist on it even if the law does not.
The signature problem – and three ways round it
This is the obstacle that stops more foreign founders than any rule of company law. Company filings in Poland are electronic, and an electronic filing has to be signed in one of three ways: with a Polish trusted profile, which requires a Polish personal identification number; with a qualified electronic signature; or with the personal signature on a Polish identity card. A founder who is abroad, has never lived in Poland and has no Polish number has none of them.
Option one
A qualified electronic signature
A qualified signature issued anywhere in the EU should be accepted, and no Polish number is needed to open an account in the registration system – date of birth and passport number will do. The caveat is practical rather than legal: not every foreign qualified signature works smoothly with the Polish system, so compatibility is worth testing before the timetable depends on it.
Option two
A Polish notary
Conclude the articles before a notary on your passport, and the deed carries the signature question for you. This costs more and loses the one-day route, but it buys articles drafted for your actual plan rather than for the template – which, for anything with investors or more than one share class, you were going to need anyway.
Option three
A power of attorney
Appoint someone in Poland who already holds the necessary signature to form and file on your behalf. This is how most of our clients abroad do it. The power of attorney has to be drawn narrowly and in the right form – a general authority to “deal with the company” is both wider than you want and, for some steps, not enough.
None of the three is obviously best; it depends on where you are, what the articles have to contain, and how fast you need the company to exist. What we would discourage is the fourth option that gets suggested in forums: having a Polish friend or a company-formation agent hold the shares for a while. A nominee arrangement is a different legal problem from the one it solves, and it reappears in the beneficial-owner filing, in the bank’s due diligence and in the residence application.
A residence permit for the entrepreneur
Forming the company and being allowed to live in Poland because of it are two separate applications, decided by different authorities against different tests. A company can be registered by someone who has never set foot in Poland. A temporary residence permit for business activity is granted only where the business itself clears a threshold – and that threshold is about the business, not about you.
Alongside the ordinary requirements for any temporary residence permit – health insurance, a stable and regular source of income sufficient to maintain yourself and dependent family members, somewhere to live in Poland, and any professional authorisation the activity needs – the business has to satisfy one of two tests.
Either
The income test
In the tax year before the application, the business achieved income of at least twelve times the average monthly gross wage in the voivodship where it is seated. Two points catch people out: it is income, not turnover, so a company with large revenues and no profit fails it; and the figure is the voivodship average, announced annually, so the same business clears the test in one region and not in another.
Or
The employment test
The business employs at least two people who are Polish citizens, or foreign nationals with free access to the labour market, on indefinite, full-time contracts, and has done so for at least the year before the application. Each of those four elements is a condition. Fixed-term contracts do not count, part-time does not count, and two people hired last month do not count.
The route for a company that has not traded yet
A company registered three months ago cannot show last year’s income or a year of employment, and the statute does not pretend otherwise. There is a third route: show that you hold the means to satisfy those conditions in future, or that you are taking steps that will lead there – in particular activity contributing to increased investment, transfer of technology, the introduction of beneficial innovations, or the creation of jobs.
This is where a start-up application is won or lost, and it is an evidential exercise rather than a form-filling one. Funds in a bank account, signed contracts, a lease, a credible plan with figures that match the funds, recruitment already under way – the authority is being asked to accept a forecast, so the file has to make the forecast look like the obvious conclusion. A business plan written for the application and nothing else behind it reads exactly as what it is.
The same tests apply where the business is run through a limited partnership, a limited joint-stock partnership, a limited liability company or a joint-stock company that you formed, joined, or whose shares you took up or acquired. A permit can also be granted where your purpose of stay is working by serving on the board of a limited liability or joint-stock company in that position, by conducting the affairs of a limited or limited joint-stock partnership as general partner, or by acting as prokurent – in which case you must meet the general conditions and the company must clear the business test. A simple joint-stock company is not named in the same terms, which is worth checking before you settle on that form for immigration reasons.
A permit of this kind is granted for the period needed to achieve the purpose of stay, up to a maximum of three years. There is one further feature to be aware of: these permits can be subject to an annual quota, and an application can be refused because the quota for the year is exhausted. Turkish nationals have a distinct position, protected by the standstill clause in the association arrangements, which can produce a different answer from the one the general rules suggest.
We do not publish an expected processing time for these applications, for the same reason as elsewhere on this site: no reliable figure exists and guessing one is worse than saying so.
Board members, prokurents and work permits
The law that governs entrusting work to foreign nationals was rewritten with effect from 1 June 2025, and it treats corporate office as work. The distinction that matters is between owning a company and running one.
| Your position in the company | Work authorisation |
|---|---|
| Shareholder only – no office, no work done for the company | None needed. Holding shares and taking dividends is not work. This is why a limited liability company is the usual answer for a passive foreign investor. |
| Member of the management board | A work permit in connection with holding an office, issued by the voivode – unless the presence exemption below applies, or a residence permit already covers the work. |
| General partner conducting the affairs of a limited or limited joint-stock partnership | Same permit as a board member. |
| Prokurent | Same permit. Granting prokura to a foreign national abroad is not a way of avoiding the question. |
| Sole shareholder and sole board member | Authorisation required. Owning the whole company does not exempt you from needing permission to run it – and this structure carries a social-insurance consequence too, dealt with below. |
| EU, EEA or Swiss national; British national covered by the withdrawal agreement | None needed in any of these roles. |
| Running your own registered sole trade | None needed for work done under civil-law contracts within that business. Getting into the sole-trade group in the first place is the hard part – see the list of titles. |
Six months in twelve – an exemption about presence, not about office
No permit is required where the foreign national is present in Poland for a total of no more than six months in any twelve consecutive months in connection with serving on the board, representing or conducting the affairs of the partnership, or holding prokura. Read it carefully: the test is physical presence in Poland, not how long you hold the office. A non-resident director who comes over for board meetings and a few client visits needs nothing. A director who moves to Warsaw needs a permit from the day the six months are used up, and the clock is cumulative across the twelve months, not per visit.
Where a permit is needed, the company has to clear two conditions together: income in the previous tax year of at least twelve times the average monthly wage in its voivodship, and at least two Polish or free-access employees on indefinite full-time contracts for at least the preceding year. The same escape route exists as for the residence permit – demonstrating the means or the steps that will meet those conditions in future, particularly investment, technology transfer, innovation or job creation.
Duration follows the company’s own position. Where the Polish entity has been carrying on business for less than a year, or does not meet those two conditions, the permit is issued for no more than one year. Otherwise the general maximum of three years applies. A new company therefore starts on annual renewals and grows out of them, which is worth knowing when you are planning how long the family’s residence documents will run for.
In practice the choice is between two routes to the same outcome: a work permit in connection with holding an office, sitting alongside whatever residence title you have; or a residence permit for business activity, which covers the work itself. Which is faster and which is more robust depends on the company’s figures, on where it is seated and on what you need the document to prove afterwards – a bank, a landlord and a school all read these papers differently. We would rather look at the company’s accounts than guess.
Tax and compliance in 2026
Two things changed for every business in Poland in 2026, and both are operational rather than fiscal: structured electronic invoicing became compulsory, and electronic delivery of official correspondence finished its roll-out. A company formed now has to be set up for both from the start.
Corporate income tax
The standard rate is 19%. A reduced rate of 9% is available to a small taxpayer and to a company in its first year of business, provided current-year revenues stay within the equivalent of EUR 2,000,000 – for 2026, the small-taxpayer threshold is PLN 8,517,000 and the current-year revenue ceiling for the 9% rate is PLN 8,431,000. The two figures differ because they are converted at different official exchange rates, which is a nuisance but not a trap: both are published.
Poland also offers a deferred regime commonly called Estonian CIT, under which tax falls due on distribution rather than on profit as it arises. The rate is 10% for a small taxpayer or a company starting out, and 20% otherwise. The conditions are strict and they exclude a great many founder-owned companies: every shareholder must be a natural person, the company may hold no interests in other entities, fewer than half of the previous year’s revenues may come from listed passive sources, and the company must employ at least three people who are not shareholders for at least 300 days a year. The election runs in four-year periods. Where it fits, it is materially better than the ordinary regime; where a shareholder is a holding company, it is simply unavailable.
One more provision to be aware of rather than to plan around: a minimum income tax applies to corporate taxpayers that record a tax loss or whose operating profitability does not exceed 2%, at a rate of 10% of a specially computed base. There are statutory exclusions, and the one that matters most here is that a company is outside it for its first three tax years. The detailed mechanics of the base have been the subject of a pending amendment, so we would check the current position before advising on it in an individual case.
VAT
The standard rate is 23%, with reduced rates of 8% and 5% for listed goods and services, and a zero rate for exports, intra-Community supplies and international transport. The threshold below which a business can stay outside VAT rose on 1 January 2026 from PLN 200,000 to PLN 240,000 of annual sales, pro-rated where the business starts mid-year. A transitional rule let businesses whose 2025 sales fell between the old and new figures use the exemption from the start of 2026 without waiting a year. If you trade cross-border within the EU, there is also an optional small-enterprise scheme that can exempt you in other member states, built around an EU-wide turnover ceiling of EUR 100,000 and a separate notification – worth asking about if most of your customers are abroad.
Electronic invoicing is now compulsory
Invoices must be issued through the national e-invoicing system. The obligation arrived in two stages: 1 February 2026 for taxpayers whose 2024 sales exceeded PLN 200,000,000, and 1 April 2026 for everyone else – VAT-registered and VAT-exempt businesses alike. Since February 2026 every taxpayer has had to be able to receive invoices through the system, with narrow exceptions for foreign and consumer customers.
Two reliefs run until 31 December 2026: a business whose invoiced sales in a month do not exceed PLN 10,000 may keep invoicing outside the system until it crosses that figure in a month, and penalties for breaches do not apply until 1 January 2027.
For a new company this is a setup decision, not a compliance afterthought: the invoicing arrangement, the accounting software and the authorisations for whoever issues invoices all need to be in place before the first sale.
Electronic delivery. Official correspondence moves through the national e-delivery service. Entities entered in the company register or the sole-trade register from 1 January 2025 have been covered since registration; the roll-out reached the last group of sole traders registered before 2025 on 1 October 2026. A company that has not set its address up is not thereby unreachable – which is the point. Deadlines run from delivery to an address you may not be reading.
Social insurance, and one structure to avoid by accident
A sole trader pays social contributions on a statutory base plus a health contribution computed on income, with the health contribution subject to a monthly minimum – in the contribution year running from February 2026, PLN 432.54. Three reliefs are worth knowing about: the start-up relief, giving six months free of social contributions though not of the health contribution; the preferential base for a further twenty-four months; and a reduced base linked to prior-year income, available where prior-year revenue stayed within PLN 120,000, for up to thirty-six months in any sixty.
The one-shareholder company and social insurance
The sole shareholder of a single-member limited liability company is treated by the social insurance system as a person conducting business activity in their own right. Contributions are due on that basis alone – no salary, no board fee, no trading, and the obligation still arises. Founders who set up a dormant holding company and leave it alone discover this when the arrears notice arrives.
The settled answer is a second, genuine shareholder: the Supreme Court held in February 2024 that a shareholder holding 99% in a two-shareholder company falls outside the provision, because the test is the literal one of a single member rather than economic dominance. The word doing the work there is genuine. A second holding that exists on paper to defeat the rule invites a challenge of its own, and a 1% shareholder should have a reason to be a shareholder.
Tax and social-insurance rules change at least annually, and the figures above state the position for 2026. We are not tax advisers and do not file your returns – see what we do and do not do – but the choice of legal form, the shareholder structure and the way founders are remunerated are decided at formation, and they are decided far more easily then than afterwards.
Buying property through the company
Acquiring real estate in Poland as a foreign national can require a permit from the minister responsible for internal affairs, and the rule has a feature that catches corporate buyers by surprise: a Polish company counts as a foreigner for this purpose if foreign nationals hold more than half of the votes or otherwise control it. Buying the shares of a Polish company that owns land can therefore need a permit just as buying the land would.
The exemptions do most of the real work:
· EEA and Swiss nationals and businesses need no permit at all. The transitional restrictions that once applied to agricultural land and second homes have both expired, so this is now a complete exemption, shares in property-owning companies included.
· A self-contained residential unit – an ordinary flat – is exempt for everyone, as is a garage unit connected with housing needs. Buying an apartment in Warsaw is not a permit case.
· Five years’ residence in Poland since the grant of a permanent residence permit or an EU long-term resident’s permit removes the requirement, as does two years for the spouse of a Polish citizen where the property will fall into the marital community of property.
· Undeveloped urban land up to 0.4 hectares may be acquired by a foreign-controlled Polish legal person for its statutory purposes – which covers a good number of ordinary commercial site purchases.
Two carve-outs cancel all of the exemptions in the second group: property in the border zone, and agricultural land over one hectare. Agricultural land is additionally subject to a separate regime on the shaping of the agricultural system, which restricts who may buy it irrespective of nationality and is a different conversation altogether. If land rather than a flat or an office unit is in view, treat the permit question as live until it has been checked.
Nine things we are told that are no longer true
Much of what circulates about starting a business in Poland was accurate at some point in the last few years. These are the statements we hear most often that would now lead you somewhere wrong.
“Any foreigner living in Poland can register as self-employed.”
No. The list of titles that permit a sole trade is closed, and the two most widely held permits – the single permit for residence and work, and the EU Blue Card – are not on it. For most employed foreign nationals in Poland, self-employment means forming a company.
“Registering the company costs about 600 złoty including the gazette announcement.”
The announcement of a register entry in the court and commercial gazette was abolished on 29 November 2025, along with its PLN 100 charge. Cost estimates that still include it, including some published in 2026, have not been updated.
“You can stay out of VAT up to 200,000 złoty.”
It became PLN 240,000 on 1 January 2026. A transitional rule also let businesses sitting between the two figures in 2025 take the exemption straight away rather than waiting a year.
“A shareholder can be paid for recurring services, so no work permit is needed.”
That route is now expressly closed for third-country nationals in the five-forms group, as is the exchange of work or services for shares in a simple joint-stock company. It was a well-known construction and it no longer works.
“If I own the whole company and take no salary, there is nothing to pay.”
The sole shareholder of a single-member limited liability company owes social and health contributions on that status alone, with no salary and no trading. A dormant one-person holding company is not free to keep.
“A company can be registered online in a day from anywhere.”
The one-day route exists, but it has to be signed with a Polish trusted profile, a qualified electronic signature or a Polish identity-card signature. Without one of those, the route is a notary or a proxy – see the signature problem.
“Every foreign board member needs a work permit.”
Not where their presence in Poland totals six months or less in any twelve consecutive months. A genuinely non-resident director needs nothing. The exemption is about presence, so it disappears the moment the director relocates.
“We will keep issuing invoices from our own system.”
Structured invoicing through the national system became compulsory for all businesses on 1 April 2026. Penalties only start on 1 January 2027, and a relief runs to the end of 2026 for very small monthly invoicing – but the obligation itself is already in force.
“The EU single market gives us 500 million consumers.”
It has not since the United Kingdom left. The EU’s population is around 452 million, and Poland’s is about 37 million and falling slowly. Both are still large markets; the figure in the brochures is simply a decade old.
How we help – and what we do not do
Immigration law is the core of this firm, and most of the companies we act for came to us because of a person: a founder who needed to be here lawfully, or a team that needed work authorisation. The corporate work grew out of that, and the two sit together naturally – the residence application and the company structure are usually the same problem looked at from two sides.
Legal form and company formation
Choosing the form against your residence title, liability and plans rather than against a list of features; drafting the articles; registering the company; the transaction tax, the beneficial-owner filing and the post-registration notifications. Where the one-day route is open to you we will say so – it is cheaper for you and quicker for us.
Contracts and ongoing advice
Drafting and reviewing the agreements the business actually runs on – customers, suppliers, contractors, shareholders, leases – and answering the questions that come up week to week once it is trading. Review is often the better value of the two: most contracts arrive on someone else’s paper.
Residence and work for the people
The founder’s own residence permit, work authorisation for board members and prokurents, and work permits, EU Blue Cards and intra-corporate transfers for the team. This is the firm’s main practice, not a sideline to the corporate work.
Disputes, and a registered address
Representation in commercial disputes and before the authorities. We can also provide a registered office address for the company where you have no premises of your own yet – a practical need at formation that is surprisingly hard to meet from abroad.
What we do not do
Tax advice and accounting. Tax advisory is a separate regulated profession in Poland and bookkeeping is a separate business. We explain the tax consequences of a legal choice, because you cannot choose a form without them, and we will tell you when a question has stopped being a legal one. We do not file your returns, keep your books or sign off your tax position, and we would rather introduce you to an accountant at the start than have you discover the gap in March.
Recruitment. We are not an employment agency and we do not find candidates. We make the employment you have already arranged lawful.
Nominee arrangements. We will not hold shares for you, or arrange for someone else to, in order to sidestep a restriction on who may trade in which form. Those structures unravel at the beneficial-owner filing, at the bank, and in the residence application – usually at the worst possible moment.
Frequently asked questions
Can I register as self-employed in Poland as a foreign national?
Only if you are an EU, EEA, Swiss or US national, or you hold one of a closed list of residence titles. Permanent residence, EU long-term residence, refugee status, a valid Karta Polaka, any temporary permit held by the spouse of a Polish citizen living in Poland, and temporary permits for university study, scientific research or family reunification are on that list. A single permit for residence and work is not, and neither is an EU Blue Card. If you are not on the list, the alternative is a company – most often a limited liability company.
Can a Blue Card holder start a business in Poland?
Not as a sole trader. The EU Blue Card is not among the titles that open every form of business, which surprises most holders given how highly qualified the card assumes them to be. A Blue Card holder can found and own a limited liability company or a simple joint-stock company. Taking a board seat in it is a separate question, because corporate office counts as work and the Blue Card authorises the work it was issued for.
How much capital do I need to set up a company in Poland?
A limited liability company needs PLN 5,000 of share capital, with a minimum nominal value of PLN 50 per share. A simple joint-stock company needs PLN 1. A limited joint-stock partnership needs PLN 50,000 and a joint-stock company PLN 100,000. Limited partnerships and the ordinary partnerships have no statutory minimum. The capital is not a fee – it is contributed to the company and the company can spend it on the business.
What does it cost to register a company in Poland?
The court fee is PLN 250 where the company is registered on template articles electronically, and PLN 500 otherwise. Transaction tax on the articles is 0.5% of the share capital, so PLN 25 on the minimum capital of a limited liability company, with the notary’s fee and the court fee deducted from the base. A notarial deed, where one is needed, is charged by tariff according to the capital. The announcement fee in the court and commercial gazette was abolished on 29 November 2025, so estimates that still include PLN 100 for it are out of date. Registering a sole trade is free.
How long does it take to register a company in Poland?
The registry court must deal with an application on template articles within one working day, and any other registration application within seven days of receipt. Those are instructional deadlines rather than promises, and actual times vary between courts. We do not publish an average, because no reliable published figure exists. In our experience the delay is rarely the court: it is a founder who cannot sign electronically, or articles that have to be redrafted once someone asks what the company is actually going to do.
Can I register a Polish company without coming to Poland?
Yes, in three ways. With a qualified electronic signature from any EU country you can use the electronic registration system yourself – no Polish identification number is needed to open an account there, though compatibility is worth testing in advance. Alternatively the articles can be concluded before a Polish notary, or you can grant a power of attorney to someone in Poland who already holds the necessary signature. The third route is the most common among our clients abroad.
Do I need a work permit if I own a Polish company?
Not for holding shares. Owning a company and receiving dividends is not work. A seat on the management board is different: that needs a work permit in connection with holding an office, unless your presence in Poland totals six months or less in any twelve consecutive months, or a residence permit already covers the work. EU, EEA and Swiss nationals, and British nationals covered by the withdrawal agreement, need nothing in either case.
Does forming a company give me the right to live in Poland?
No. They are separate applications. A temporary residence permit for business activity requires the business to clear a threshold: income in the previous tax year of at least twelve times the average monthly wage in its voivodship, or at least two Polish or free-access employees on indefinite full-time contracts for at least the preceding year. A new company that can show neither must instead demonstrate that it holds the means, or is taking steps, that will satisfy those conditions in future – which is an evidential exercise, and the point at which most start-up applications are won or lost.
Must my company use the national e-invoicing system?
Yes. Structured e-invoicing became compulsory for taxpayers with 2024 sales above PLN 200,000,000 on 1 February 2026 and for every other business on 1 April 2026, whether VAT-registered or VAT-exempt. Every taxpayer has had to be able to receive invoices through the system since February 2026. Penalties for breaches apply from 1 January 2027, and a business whose invoiced sales in a month stay within PLN 10,000 may invoice outside the system until the end of 2026.
Do I need a Polish business bank account?
No statute requires one as such, and business-to-business transactions below PLN 15,000 can be settled otherwise. In practice you need one, because only business accounts appear on the tax authority’s whitelist of taxpayer accounts, and a customer paying you more than PLN 15,000 into an account that is not on it loses their deduction and can become jointly liable for your VAT. Your counterparties will therefore require it whatever the law says. Once opened, the account must be notified to the tax office.
Can my Polish company buy property in Poland?
A Polish company counts as a foreigner for this purpose if foreign nationals hold more than half the votes or otherwise control it, so a permit from the minister responsible for internal affairs can be required – and buying shares in a Polish company that owns land can need one too. EEA and Swiss nationals and businesses are completely exempt. For everyone else the main exemptions are a self-contained residential unit, five years’ residence after a permanent or EU long-term residence permit, and undeveloped urban land up to 0.4 hectares acquired for the company’s statutory purposes. None of those exemptions apply in the border zone or to agricultural land over one hectare.
I will own 100% of the company and take no salary. Is there anything to pay?
Yes. The sole shareholder of a single-member limited liability company is treated as a person conducting business activity in their own right, and owes social and health contributions on that status alone – with no salary, no board fee and no trading. The settled answer is a second, genuine shareholder: the Supreme Court held in February 2024 that a 99% shareholder in a two-shareholder company falls outside the rule, because the test is the literal one of a single member. A second holding created only to defeat the rule invites a challenge of its own.
Tell us what you are planning
Three facts usually settle most of this page for an individual case: your nationality, the residence title you hold or expect to hold, and what the business will actually do. With those we can tell you which forms are open to you, which of them fits, whether you will need work authorisation, and what the residence application will have to prove. If the answer is that you can do it yourself through the one-day electronic route, we will say that too.
Your attorney
Konrad Krasuski – Attorney at law
Konrad leads the firm’s practice for companies: legal form and company formation, contracts and ongoing advice for entrepreneurs, work authorisation for board members, and the residence side for founders and their families. He is the contact for the pages on this part of the site.
k.krasuski@krasuski.legal
+48 736 860 916 Wrocław: +48 71 719 59 08
Legal status as of October 2026. Tax rates, thresholds and contribution amounts stated on this page are those applying in 2026 and change at least annually. This article is general information and does not constitute legal advice in an individual case, and it is not tax advice. Which forms of business are open to a particular person, which form suits a particular plan, and whether a company and its figures satisfy the conditions for a residence or work permit, depend on the documents and can only be assessed on them.
Warsaw Office
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