19% tax for self employed persons

Can anyone help me? There is a standard 19% tax for self employed persons in poland. Can any tell me if you can also deduct any deductable expenses? I am getting mixed reports back from people including my accountant who says i cant.

Hi vndunne,

I'm an Australian living in Wroclaw, my wife and i have our own business here, we may be able to help you out with some questions.

What do you mean ?

i think he means what he can claim as business expences

Hi Davidpeake. Thanks for you mail. I have since confirmed with my accountant that I can. As you probably know, it takes a while to get answers over here. I do be in wroclaw a lot and would be interested in hearing your experiences.

David,

I've just arrived here. Can you offer me any advise regarding tax?
I'm Australian but have been in the UK for the last 3 years where I was paying around 14% tax as I was non domiciled and self employed.

Do expats need to pay the full tax rate as we most likely don't plan on requiring a pension after we finish work?

Any advise would be apreciated.

What is better? Being employed or self-employed in Krakow, Poland?

I have been given the choice of going self-employed - is it a good choice?

I'm definitely staying til end of June but may stay longer.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

samr,

it does not matter if you will not ask for the pension later on, you still have to pay for it.

jm,

it all depends, if your self employed you will have to apply for all the correct paperwork, forms, if its for a short time i would think it is not worth it.

Just do what many , many Poles do and work for cash and don't pay taxes. It is so prevalent here it is just accepted as normal.

thats another idea, just make sure you get paid, have heard of a few people having trouble getting money from some schools when doing this..

Yeah I'd insist on payment up front...or at least on a weekly basis.

jm123: being self-employed means you have more cash in your pocket (assuming you earn more than 37,024zl a year, if you earn less than that you're better off being employed because the tax rate on that income level is only 19% anyway). I wouldn't think it's worth the hassle for only four months. One thing to watch out for is the fact that you can not set-up a one person company and then invoice any company for which you have worked in the previous 12 months.

samr: Tax rate here for self-employed is 19% of your net income (same as Poles pay). On top of that are ZUS (national insurance and pension) payments. For the first two years of having a company it's about 200zl per month, after that it rises to about 900zl per month.

vndunne: Yes you can deduct lots of things. Things I deduct/have deducted include: internet bill (100% and the VAT), mobile phone bill (100% and the VAT), monthly tram/bus pass (100%), plane ticket to England at Christmas (100%), all train tickets in Poland (100%), foreign travel (100% plus a per diem allowance), new computer (100% and the VAT), all taxi journeys (100%), cost of accountant (100%), all English language books (100%), mobile phone (100% and the VAT), car insurance (100%), fuel costs (100%), a 48 inch plasma screen TV (100% and the VAT, just make sure the invoice describes the thing as a computer monitor). Because my company is run out of the apartment where I live I can also deduct the administration charge on my apartment (30%), home phone (30%), gas and electricity bills (30%). I could probably deduct a percentage of the mortgage too but the mortgage is already paid off.

Because my company is registered for literary creation (code 92.31g) and I write about restaurants and bars, I also put every restaurant bill and a healthy amount of bar bills through too. The Polish tax man hates it (because the amount which can be spent entertaining clients is strictly limited) but I get paid for writing about those places and obviously can't write about them if I don't go to them!


A complete joke from a complete joke. No school is going to pay teachers in advance. Very very few will pay on a weekly basis (partly because they don't want to quadruple the amount of work involved with paying people and partly because they won't be invoicing their clients on a weekly basis). But then no school is giving Jones a job anyway.

Hey Harry

Thanks for the valuable information.
Does these deduction apply even for employed people.
e.g suppose you earning = 10,000
Rent = -2000
Internet= -200
Phone = -100

NET = 7700
So you pay tax on 7,700 ???
just clarify.My question is in case someone is not self employed...

if it were a genuine business expense you wouldn't need a "special" invoice

Harry it couldn't be more obvious you are lashing out because I won't be your boyfriend. Move on man...there are plenty of fish in the sea!

For the activities my company is registered for, I certainly needed the 'adjusted' invoice. The tax office in Warsaw are very hot on self-employed people buying things like large televisions and putting the cost down as a business expense. If your company is registered for things like language teaching, you can say that you need to show students films (just as you can put a ipod down as a business expense if you also buy a speaker set to go with it and use the thing as a replacement tape/cd player for listening exercises with students). But I'm not registered for language teaching.

And anyway, I do use the screen as a computer monitor. It is connected to my computer and the tax man is welcome to come and check that. With a wireless keyboard and mouse, I can work from bed no problem.

hemendra: I don't know much about tax for employed people. I never really bothered with tax before I set up my own company. I'd always negotiate my rates as net figures, get paid by bank transfer (never in cash) and leave the companies I worked for to pay the tax. However, I'm pretty sure that rent is not a tax deductable for employed people and I know that there are four tax bands: 0%, 19%, 30% and 40%. Zero is for the first couple of thousand, 19% for the income up to about 40,000, 30% for the income between 40,000 and 70,000, 40% for anything above 70,000.

they are different level of tax.19 is the smaller one.

A very important issue, esp given that the deadline for PIT submissions is at the end of April, 5 weeks away