How much does it cost to start a business in Poland in 2026? ZUS, health contribution, VAT and cash register

How much does it cost to start a business in Poland? Registering a sole proprietorship in CEIDG (the Central Register and Information on Economic Activity) costs PLN 0. The money starts to flow only after registration, and the biggest item of the first year is not equipment or software but contributions. The health contribution is due from the first month, even while you use the start relief (ulga na start). Social contributions are zero for half a year, then rise in two steps.

A second group of costs is obligations that appear or not depending on what you sell, and to whom. The VAT exemption threshold decides whether you register as an active VAT payer. The type of activity and sales to consumers decide whether you need a cash register. You will need a bank account, but it does not always have to be a business one.

Technology is the smallest and most controllable part of this bill. Below we go through each item at 2026 rates, with a link to the source next to every amount. We checked all amounts and rules on 2 October 2026. The worked example of the first 12 months is our own arithmetic, not an official calculation.

How much does it cost to start a business? Registration isn't the answer

Entry in CEIDG costs nothing. The biznes.gov.pl page Register a business in CEIDG says so plainly: "Złożenie wniosku o wpis do CEIDG jest BEZPŁATNE!" (filing an application for entry in CEIDG is free). The entry appears "no later than the next working day after the application arrives", and you need not wait for it: "you can start trading on the day you file the application".

To file online you need an electronic signature. biznes.gov.pl lists a Profil Zaufany (Trusted Profile, a free e-ID) or a qualified signature and adds that "Profil Zaufany is a free tool". The ou736 page also accepts a personal signature (podpis osobisty), and you can file in the mObywatel app, in the Firma service. The mObywatel version has limits: the page tells you to handle VAT registration and the notification to ZUS (the Social Insurance Institution) through biznes.gov.pl. You cannot use a proxy for an online application.

One application sets several offices in motion at once. According to biznes.gov.pl, "the system prepares the application for entry in the register of entrepreneurs, the application for an e-Delivery address (e-Doręczenia) and the notification to ZUS or KRUS (the Agricultural Social Insurance Fund), GUS (Statistics Poland) and the tax office". If you don't have the numbers yet, you get them automatically: "NIP (tax ID) within 1 working day, REGON (statistical number) within 7 days". You register with ZUS for insurance within 7 days of starting.

Before you register, check whether you have to. Unregistered activity (działalność nierejestrowana) is allowed if revenue does not exceed 225% of the minimum wage in any quarter and you have not run a business in the last 60 months (Entrepreneurs' Law, Art. 5(1)). biznes.gov.pl gives the 2026 amount: the quarterly revenue limit for unregistered activity in 2026 is PLN 10,813.50.

Social contributions: from zero to the full rate

The social contributions of a new sole proprietorship rise in three steps: PLN 0 for 6 months, reduced for 24 months, then full or Small ZUS Plus (Mały ZUS Plus). Each stage has its own biznes.gov.pl page, and the amounts come from ZUS's notice on contributions in 2026 of 2 February 2026.

Stage 1: start relief, months 1–6. According to biznes.gov.pl, the relief waives, for six full months from the start of the business, contributions for social insurance (pension, disability and accident insurance), the Labour Fund (Fundusz Pracy) and the Solidarity Fund (Fundusz Solidarnościowy). It does not cover health insurance. You qualify if you run a sole proprietorship or are a partner in a civil-law partnership, you are starting a business for the first time or at least 60 months after suspending or closing a previous one, and you are not working for a former employer in the same scope as your employment in the current or previous year. A month that starts part-way through does not count towards the six; the page gives the example of a firm founded on 7 February 2025 whose relief ended on 31 August 2025. You use the relief by registering with ZUS within 7 days for health insurance only, with a code starting 05 40.

Zero contributions have a price, and biznes.gov.pl states it outright. On the start relief you "will not receive the benefits that come with sickness insurance": sickness benefit, rehabilitation benefit, maternity and care allowance. On top of that, the relief period, in which you pay no pension contributions, is not counted towards the contribution record for your pension and does not raise the future pension. You can give up the relief at any time before the 6 months are up; ZUS adds that you then pay contributions on a base of at least 30% of the minimum wage.

Stage 2: preferential contributions, months 7–30. biznes.gov.pl describes the second step: new sole proprietorships and civil-partnership partners can pay lower contributions for a full 24 calendar months, and in 2026 the reduced base is 30% of PLN 4,806, that is PLN 1,441.80. According to ZUS that gives PLN 456.18 a month with voluntary sickness insurance or PLN 420.86 without it, with no Labour Fund or Solidarity Fund contributions when the business is your only title to insurance. The conditions are similar to the start relief. Anyone who ran a business or creative or artistic activity in the last 60 months is out, and so is anyone who in that time was a partner in a general, limited, professional partnership or a single-member limited company.

Stage 3: Small ZUS Plus or full contributions, from month 31. Small ZUS Plus is a base that depends on the previous year's income and, according to ZUS, "cannot be lower than 30% of the minimum wage or higher than 60% of the forecast average monthly wage". biznes.gov.pl sets two conditions: the previous year's revenue "did not exceed PLN 120,000" and the business ran for at least 60 days in that year. It also lists two exclusions that matter for a new firm: you cannot pay it "in the first year of running the business" or while you are entitled to the reduced 30% base. That is why in the typical path it appears only after the 24 months of preferential contributions. A new limit applies from 1 January 2026: you can pay these contributions "for a maximum of 36 months in every period of 60 calendar months of running a business". It is set out in Art. 18c(11a) of the Social Insurance System Act, added by the deregulation act of 21 May 2025. Liberal professions, among others, are excluded from Small ZUS Plus.

Without Small ZUS Plus you pay full contributions on a base of PLN 5,652, which is 60% of the forecast average wage for 2026 (PLN 9,420). According to ZUS that is PLN 1,926.76 a month including the Labour and Solidarity Funds, or PLN 1,788.29 without voluntary sickness insurance. ZUS calculates these amounts at an accident rate of 1.67%, which may differ by company size and sector.

The health contribution in 2026

None of the three reliefs reduces the health contribution, so it is the firm's permanent cost from the first month. ZUS lists people on the start relief among those who pay it, and biznes.gov.pl says of the start relief: "you are obliged to register for health insurance and pay the health contribution every month". Small ZUS Plus does not cover it either. The amount depends on the form of taxation you choose at registration.

According to biznes.gov.pl, a new firm can choose among three forms: the tax scale (12% and 32%), the flat tax (19%) or the lump-sum tax on recorded revenue (ryczałt). You cannot choose the tax card: "if you are only starting a business, you cannot choose the tax card". The same page warns that the lump sum "will not always be possible", because some activities cannot be taxed that way. The form also sets your records: under the scale and the flat tax you keep a tax revenue and expense ledger (KPiR), under the lump sum a revenue record; how to match accounting software to them we cover separately.

We give the health contribution amounts from ZUS and the percentage rates for the scale and the flat tax from biznes.gov.pl:

• Tax scale: 9% of income. Flat tax: 4.9% of income. The base is set from the previous month's income, but in the contribution year from 1 February 2026 to 31 January 2027 it cannot be lower than PLN 4,806, that is 100% of the minimum wage. Hence the minimum contribution: PLN 432.54 for every month from February 2026 to January 2027. For January 2026, the last month of the previous contribution year, the minimum was PLN 314.96.
• Lump sum: 9% of a fixed base that depends on revenue earned since the start of the year. Up to PLN 60,000 the contribution is PLN 498.35, from PLN 60,000 to 300,000 it is PLN 830.58, and above PLN 300,000 it is PLN 1,495.04 a month.

At low incomes at the start of a business, the scale and the flat tax in practice mean the minimum contribution, PLN 432.54. The lump sum in its lowest bracket costs PLN 498.35, and its amount depends not on income but on cumulative revenue. Choosing a form of taxation is therefore also choosing the size of the health contribution. Both amounts, however, are only the contribution and not the tax; which variant comes out cheaper overall depends on your costs and margin.

A worked example: what the first 12 months cost

The calculation below is our own arithmetic on ZUS and biznes.gov.pl amounts, not an official calculation. We make four assumptions. You are starting a sole proprietorship for the first time and meet the start-relief conditions. You start on the first day of a month, so the first month counts towards the six months of relief. You pay the minimum health contribution. We count all 12 months at 2026 rates.

The last assumption is a simplification. The PLN 432.54 amount applies until January 2027, and the lump-sum and social contribution rates until December 2026. For later months you will pay at the new amounts ZUS announces for 2027. If you start in autumn 2026, that affects all six months of preferential contributions and most months of the health contribution, so treat the calculation as a reference point, not a forecast.

Social contributions: 6 months at PLN 0 plus 6 months at PLN 456.18 gives PLN 2,737.08. Without voluntary sickness insurance it is 6 × PLN 420.86, that is PLN 2,525.16.

Health contribution:

• scale or flat tax at low income: 12 × PLN 432.54 = PLN 5,190.48;
• lump sum with revenue up to PLN 60,000: 12 × PLN 498.35 = PLN 5,980.20.

Total over the first 12 months: about PLN 7,927.56 under the scale or flat tax and about PLN 8,717.28 under the lump sum, in both cases with voluntary sickness insurance from month seven.

That amount excludes income tax, VAT, bank fees and technology. It is the contribution minimum at low incomes, not a company budget. In later years the bill rises: months 7–30 are preferential contributions, and from month 31 the full PLN 1,926.76 (at 2026 rates) or Small ZUS Plus if you meet its conditions.

VAT: the PLN 240,000 threshold

From 1 January 2026 the VAT exemption threshold is PLN 240,000 of sales excluding tax. Art. 113(1) of the VAT Act, in the consolidated text (Dz.U. 2026 item 1263), exempts the sales of a taxpayer "whose value of sales, excluding tax, did not exceed PLN 240,000 in the previous or the current tax year". A note to that provision points to an amendment by the act of 24 June 2025 (Dz.U. item 896), which came into force on 1 January 2026. Biznes.gov.pl gives the same amount: you need not register when your sales do not exceed PLN 240,000 a year. The EU's small-business scheme (Directive (EU) 2020/285) only sets a ceiling for member states; the number that applies to you is Polish.

Four rules in Art. 113 decide how the threshold works in a new firm:

• Starting part-way through the year (para. 9). You calculate the threshold in proportion to the period of business in the tax year. The later in the year you start, the lower the sales that push you over it.
• Losing the exemption (paras. 5 and 10). Once you exceed the threshold, including the proportional one in the first year, the exemption lapses from the transaction that exceeded it, not from the next month.
• Opting out (para. 4). You can give up the exemption yourself by notifying the head of the tax office in writing before the start of the month from which you opt out. A new firm can do it before the day of its first sale.
• No exemption whatever the turnover (para. 13). You cannot use the exemption when providing, among others, legal, advisory (except some agricultural advice), jewellery and debt-collection services, or selling goods from Annex 12 to the Act, excise goods (with exceptions), and car and motorcycle parts. The same applies to distance sales of cosmetics, computers and electronics, electrical appliances and machines.

If you are an active VAT payer from the start, you file the VAT-R registration "no later than the day before you start selling goods or providing services subject to VAT" (biznes.gov.pl). You can file it together with the CEIDG application. For a taxpayer using the exemption, the page says you "may, but need not" file VAT-R. Exemption from VAT does not release you from issuing invoices where you must. A Polish invoice may be a simplified one, for example when its total does not exceed PLN 450 or €100 (Art. 106e(5)(3) of the VAT Act). What an invoice must contain, and how KSeF (the National e-Invoicing System) also covers VAT-exempt taxpayers, is in invoicing software.

Cash registers and bank accounts

A new firm selling to consumers can run without a cash register (kasa fiskalna) until the end of 2027 if its sales to private persons do not exceed PLN 20,000 in proportion to the period of activity. The rules are set by the Minister of Finance regulation of 17 December 2024 (Dz.U. 2024 item 1902, amended in 2026 in only two annex items). Under § 3(1)(2), taxpayers who start sales to private persons not running a business, and to flat-rate farmers, after 31 December 2024 are exempt, "but no longer than until 31 December 2027", if their expected sales of this kind, in proportion to the period in the tax year, do not exceed PLN 20,000. Amounts are net of VAT.

The exemption does not end on the day you exceed the limit. Under § 5(1) it lapses two months after the month in which sales exceeded PLN 20,000. So you have time to buy and register a cash register, counted from the end of the month in which you passed the limit.

The limit won't help if your activity is on the list in § 4(1). A register is mandatory there from the first sale to a consumer, whatever the turnover, and a firm on the exemption that performs such an activity loses the exemption at once (§ 5(2)). The list includes:

• legal, tax-advisory, hairdressing, cosmetic and cosmetology services;
• restaurants in fixed premises, and catering;
• vehicle repair, tyre changes, taxis;
• medical care by doctors and dentists (with exceptions);
• sales of computers, laptops, tablets and electronics, including phones and smartwatches;
• sales of perfume, alcohol, tobacco products and fuel.

A separate route is the annex to the regulation, which exempts some activities regardless of turnover, also until the end of 2027. For a small service firm the key one is item 42: services to private persons if you receive the entire payment into a bank account (or via the post office or a SKOK credit union) and the records and proofs of payment "unambiguously show which specific service they concern". Item 41 has similar conditions for mail-order sales of goods, with the buyer's data in the records. Some services from the mandatory list (medical, legal, tax advice) provided only remotely, on the item 42 terms, can return to the exemption under § 4(3). These conditions are easy to misread, so read the provision itself or ask your accountant before you decide.

On bank accounts: a separate business account is not mandatory for everyone. According to biznes.gov.pl, entrepreneurs may use a business account or their private account in their business, but it must be an account with only one holder. You need an account because you cannot pay another business in cash when a single transaction exceeds PLN 15,000. The page adds that an account is handy for paying taxes and ZUS contributions, though micro-entrepreneurs may also pay them at the post office. A business account becomes necessary once you are an active VAT payer, because only business accounts are published on the White List of VAT taxpayers (Biała lista podatników VAT), and when you settle transactions through the split-payment mechanism. Account fees depend on the bank and the package, so we don't quote them here.

How to build your own number

Each of the four lookups has a Polish answer, so you can build your forecast from this article:

1. Social contributions: PLN 0 for months 1–6, PLN 456.18 (PLN 420.86 without sickness insurance) for months 7–30, then PLN 1,926.76 or Small ZUS Plus — from month 31 usually the largest recurring line.
2. The health contribution: PLN 432.54 a month at the minimum on the scale or flat tax, or PLN 498.35, PLN 830.58 or PLN 1,495.04 on the lump sum, depending on cumulative revenue.
3. The VAT threshold: PLN 240,000 of sales, and whether opting into VAT from the start makes sense for your costs and customers.
4. A cash register and a bank account: the PLN 20,000 exemption until the end of 2027 or the list in § 4, and a private single-holder account versus the business account that VAT payers need.

None of these lookups takes long on its own. Budgeting from a number you found online without doing them is the version that actually costs money.

Technology: the smallest and most controllable line

The most important official tools for the start are free: entry in CEIDG, a Profil Zaufany and the Ministry of Finance apps for KSeF, namely the Taxpayer Application and the Mobile Application. You pay only for what you build yourself.

• Domain and hosting. A simple site you run yourself costs about PLN 310–430 a year according to our article on web hosting cost: renewing a .pl domain about PLN 110–130 plus shared hosting at PLN 200–300, with an SSL certificate at PLN 0 (prices collected in August 2026).
• Mail on your domain. From PLN 3.87 (Zoho Mail Lite, annual billing) to PLN 31.50 (Google Workspace Business Starter with an annual commitment) a mailbox a month. How the options differ beyond price is in business email.
• The whole bill for a brochure site. In our study of SaaS tool costs, scenario S1 (a brochure site, one person) costs PLN 3,200 net a year. According to the study, "77% of the bill is human time, not software": site care alone is PLN 2,400, and the four tool items together cost PLN 697. We collected the data on 25–26 August 2026 at 1 EUR = PLN 4.30.

In the first year, technology is therefore a fraction of what contributions take. The order of purchases matters more than the amount. What to buy in week zero, and what can wait for the first client or employee, is set out in technology for a new business. You can price your own case in our maintenance cost calculator.