Chartered accountant from India joining a company in Poland. Cost of living in Poznan?

Hi, I am from Delhi, India. I am chartered accountant and joining a Indian company in poznan. We are three including me, my wife and my 6 years old daughter.

Can any one suggest about the cost of living, car running cost, school fees, health insurance, house rent etc

rent - about 3000-4000 for a large house in suburbs.
car - 400 per month petrol 200 parking
health insurance - get your company to pay but a few hundred per month
overall you would need to be getting PLN 10k net if you want to save money but you could probably live a modest life on PLN 8k net.

Average pay of qualifieds here is about PLN 15-20k gross per month.

Hey!!
Which part of Poland are you thinking of setlling? what the range of salary they have offered you?

Average pay of qualifieds here is about PLN 15-20k gross per month.

False.

15000 per month? For which qualified jobs???
5000-6000 looks more down to earth

Sounds right - in Poznan they may go lower.

For which qualified jobs??? -

Well...

A respected Polish mid-tier lawyer in a salaried ( non-partner ) position within a bigger firm ( only applicable to legal firms from Warsaw, Wroclaw, Tri-City and Cracow, think Weil, Gotshal & Manges or Domanski, Zakrzewski, Palinka ) will very often make more than 15k zloty net/per month.

Same goes for a lawyer with his own practice outside of said areas, but still within a bigger city - like in Lodz or Szczecin ( though there's usually only a few of them per such city, the rest make less ).

During the real-estate boom I've seen ads for in-house lawyers admitted to the Polish bar with experience in real estate. Foreign developers were looking and were willing to pay adequate salaries ( the numbers I've seen were 60k pounds per annum ). Dunno how these jobs turned out when the market went belly up though.

Doctors - a lot of them make mint in private practice, there's an especially lucrative "new drug testing" market in Poland.

Architects - have personally paid people in excess of 250.000 zloty for what amounted to less than a year's worth of work.

One thing though - we are talking about established professionals educated locally, with, I must stress, very good local personal contacts and years of experience. So that's what the top people make ( and actually I wouldn't be shocked if partners in legal firms I mentioned made 1 mil dollars a year after bonuses ). But the rest... As was said - 5/6 k gross seems a lot more reasonable.

Also, please remember nobody in their right mind will pay an accountant who just got off a plane from India 15-20k zloty gross per month here, since they can easily find local people with the same qualifications for half the amount. Same goes for a lawyer from the prestigious Kandahar Law School with no knowledge of the local standards or a doctor from Bangladesh who doesn't speak Polish.

6000 is about what you can expect from a non-Big 4 company as a chartered accountant. The Big 4 offer much higher salaries, though - 5000/6000 is about the going rate for a semi-qualified accountant with a couple of years experience at the junior/specialist level.

But as this is an in-company job, they might be paying higher for an Indian national - still, you need at least 8-10k gross to be comfortable here.

Nonsense - there are surely no qualified accountants - either KIBR or ACCA willing to work for such cash. If there are then I most certainly wouldn't want their advice on my own money ! Maybe some very old KIBR people with no English skills but that is not the norm at all.

I'm interviewing for a post at the moment and the 4 on my shortlist have current earnings of 10-12k. And these are newly qualified people. If you want someone with 3-4 years experience after qualifying you have to pay more.

Of course there are people with lesser qualifications like diploms working for 6k but that was not the question.

@CMS. Are you sure you are talking about accountants here? What you are looking for seems more like a business advisor or an other consultant with a degree in economics. I find it hard to believe that people filing bills and such (accountants) are making over 40000$ a year.

In Estonia, a country with the same GDP per capita, working with accounting is more like a 20000-25000$ a year job.

It means qualified accountants - which is what the original poster asked about. i.e. people able to sign an audit, provide a valuation, represent a client in court etc.

Accounts clerks which is what you are talking about earn about PLN 3.000 in most big Polish towns.

What's the difference between a qualified accountant and a CPA?

Reason I am asking is that it costs a heck of a lot to do accounting in Luxemburg. There are many talented people in Poland who could easily learn the German accounting system, when they've already got a Masters degree in accounting. If so, I could set up some accountants to work from Poland, taking on customers from Luxemburg. Only thing is, to be allowed to do accounting for other peoples companies, one would need at least a Masters degree in accounting. So, what I am asking is really, what do people with a Masters degree in accounting make?

People who have that Masters degree and work with VAT, salaries and tax for small business such as carpenters, hair dressers and other small business.

When the average gross salary in Poland is 1290$ a month, it seems a bit low to be paid 3000 PLN gross (855$) a month, when you have five years in business school.

>>>>>>When the average gross salary in Poland is 1290$ a month, it seems a bit low to be paid 3000 PLN gross (855$) a month, when you have five years in business school.

I take your point, but please tell us all, where did you read that the average salary in Poland is 1290 US dollars. That would make approx. 4,500 PLN gross.

Really?

As I said above - people like this tend to be self employed with perhaps an assistant, but no more. There's just not enough profit in working with small businesses like this to build an empire.


Why is it a bit low? Poland doesn't work like Western Europe when it comes to salaries.


At 3zl-$1, it would be about right :) It's only with the Zloty collapsing recently that's messed up the figures.

As it stands though, outsourcing to Poland makes a hell of a lot of sense right now.

I certainly agree with you on the outsourcing question.

But why, or why, is it that the PLN is always weak when I am in England, but the minute I get to Poland, all of a sudden it becomes strong. In a weeks time, pound sterling will probably buy me 5 PLN if not less..

Ask the idiots that trade FX ;)

The zloty exchange rate seems to never be actually based on fundamentals.

It's much more efficient for five accountants to share one assistant, than it is working alone. On the countryside it might be hard to find customers, but in the city there's plenty of small business, and plenty needing an accountant. I really don't understand why it would be more efficient working alone. But, let's say you're right, those who helps small business work alone. Surely they get paid for the work they do alone.

The gross monthly salary is equivalent to 1290$ (according to the Polish statistic bureau). If the *average* salary is 1290$, why would someone who's got five years in business school (as CPAs have) settle for a pay which is below the national avarage?

@terri, there's lots of info en wages and such in the wikipedia entry on the polish economy.

Stop looking at it from a Western perspective, because such perspectives rarely apply in Poland. Such small, self employed accountants are never, ever going to share assistants - it's just not the way things are done here.

It's also not a matter of "efficiency", but rather "trust". Some of us also prefer working with accountants who work by themselves, as they're responsible to themselves only - and there's no messing about with "assistants" or "clerks" who know nothing.

And yes, they get paid. How much do they earn? It's impossible to say. Prices can range from as little as 100zl+VAT (what I was paying) through 2,000zl a month depending on workload.


Again, you're looking at this from a Western perspective. Unemployment is chronic among young people in Poland - it's an employers market. And you seem to be mixing up what you're talking about - someone who has serious real world accountancy qualifications won't be working with small clients in such practices. They'll be working in serious jobs with big clients.

Incidentally, it's quite normal for young graduates to work for far less than average wage - Poland tends to start young people off on pathetically low salaries, but then give them large payrises for experience.

"And you seem to be mixing up what you're talking about - someone who has serious real world accountancy qualifications won't be working with small clients in such practices. They'll be working in serious jobs with big clients.

Incidentally, it's quite normal for young graduates to work for far less than average wage - Poland tends to start young people off on pathetically low salaries, but then give them large payrises for experience."

The last part sounds good for an employeers perspective. I assumed no one was allowed to do accounting unless they had a 5 year Masters degree, as it's what I am used to (I can't say I like the rules, but it is what it is). If people without a Masters degree are allowed to do accounting for small and medium business, than it all makes more sense.

How much do you reckon someone with a Masters degree in economics and are certified as a CPA normally make? Not in Warsaw, but smaller cities like Gdansk or Szczecin.

My plan is really simple: We're drowning in expences here. An accountant here at home will charge a fortune just for a hello, handshake and half hour of work. We're not allowed to use people without a Master, so I am thinking of teaching some Polish people the skills required to do the work they do at home, in our language, just as good. Within a year they'll be better than our own overtly expensive and not especially good CPAs. So, I'll be a reseller of their services to plenly of small business here at home. The thing you say about trust, I thought Poland was a high-trust society, where everyone trusts each other. But perhaps that was wrong as well.

wondering, your idea has some merit but is very confused.

A CPA is a qualified person - i.e. someone who has passed a tough set of exams and is able to sign certain documents (.e.g an audit or an opinion for a bank). The Polish equivalent is called KIBR. As I said in an earlier post then a newly qualified person with KIBR would start at about 10k and go up to 14k depending on their language skills. German and French speaking KIBRs have strong earning power and career prospects and would not be too keen on preparing accounts for luxembourgeois hairdressers. I think they would also need a practicing certificate for Luxembourg ?

The reason for high rates is because for much of the 90s the Polish KIBR institute was more or less a closed shop with only a handful of people qualifying - in some years literally in single figures. This was changed when Poland went through EU accession but there are still far too few qualified accountants for the size of the market. The process for putting graduates through is also costly and time consuming so only the Big 4 and 5-6 medium firms bother to do that. Some young people also do foreign qualifications - mostly ACCA and are of a reasonable standard but would also want wages of PLN 10k plus.

Masters degrees in accounting are rare and in any case the teaching of accounting in Polish universities is very weak.

What I referred to as accounts clerks getting PLN 3k are not always graduates and not necessarily with English. They are invoice punchers who know a few extra things - mainly VAT rules, social security rules and a basis knowledge of how to prepare financial statements (assuming nothing complex within those statements). In secondary towns you might have some luck recruiting but huge numbers of the ones that do speak foreign languages are being taken by big outsourcing centres.

It's some fascinating info you bring to the table cms! Both about the 90s and the educating, and this: "In secondary towns you might have some luck recruiting but huge numbers of the ones that do speak foreign languages are being taken by big outsourcing centres". If you can give me any names of such outsourcing companies or links to sites than I'd really appreciate that. More are better. :-)

"Prices can range from as little as 100zl+VAT (what I was paying) through 2,000zl a month depending on workload."

The 100zl+VAT, is that what you pay per hour? (I guess the cost includes office rental, supplies and all the accountant needs to do it's job, so it's more a expence figure than a wage figure, but is it hourly?).

If we want people who are really intelligent (but not educated in college/uni), do you think we'd be able to get them to work for gross 4000 PLN per month? I guess there's plenty of smart people in Poland who have not got a chance to educate themselves, without that meaning they aren't as smart as the others..

Per hour? No, per month. That's to deal with the accounts for a self employed individual who isn't doing anything particularly complicated, but who needs to make sure that everything is in order for the tax office, including dealing with deductions and perhaps a couple of foreign currency invoices. What was interesting is that many Polish accountants try and pretend that foreign currency transactions are "difficult" to deal with - when they aren't.

But bear in mind that this is for someone who doesn't speak foreign languages. She's more than capable of doing what I needed doing - but you wouldn't hire her to deal with Luxembourgish accounts.


If they're half-way intelligent, they'll have finished university. Poland isn't like the West - you MUST finish university to do anything worthwhile here.

As for "no chance to educate themselves", that simply isn't true. Anyone smart can find the 250zl a month to study at a private uni part time - if they're smart, that is.

Smarts got nothing to do with it.

CMS, I'm terribly sorry but you did post something I can't agree with.


There are two types of jobs that give one the legal right for representing parties in court in Poland. Both require a law degree and 3 years PQE training, then there's the local bar exam.

People without a law degree are unable to represent clients in courts in Poland, period.

If you know the legal basis for them to do so, by all means please enlighten me.

I think you've misunderstood him - while obviously, you need to have someone qualified to represent you in court, it doesn't stop that person calling your accountant as a witness.

I'm terribly sorry but "represent a client in court" is rather difficult to misunderstand.

I can have a boy who shines my shoes called to the stand as well, that doesn't make him able to represent me.

That's just the way English is - if the legal representative in court (who is defending you) calls someone as a witness, they are representing you if it's a professional advisor. You wouldn't say that they're appearing as a witness, because they're there in a professional capacity (and being paid for it).

delphiandomine. It's really nonsensical to say you pay an accountant 100 zl per month without specifying what the workload is. It could be anything from x to y hours, so it doesn't really tell anything.

I found the answer to my question. Altrough only a bachelor's degree (+ a year or so in experience) is needed to be allowed to do accounting, I found the salaries for the master students in economics in Poland. Here they are:

Warsaw School of Economics Poland - 51,063$
Kozminski University Poland - 46,847$

It's not even sure that it covers bonuses, overtime etc. I think it's without that.
Source: rankings.ft.com/businessschoolrankings/european-business-school-rankin gs-2011

When the (average) gross monthly pay in Poland is 1137$ (13644$ a year) I really don't see why more people just take the economics degree (is it expensive, very few spots compared to people applying making it hard to be accepted, or other things?).

It can't be good for society to have one group making 50000$ and another making 13644$.

The fifty is the statistic from the year after graduation, so it's bound to go further up.

Thanks to all for the good replies in this thread.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_in_Europe_by_monthly_average_w age