Income tax for remote workers in Poland

OK i know the theory of double tax but looking for people who have worked remotely and can tell me how this works in practice.

I have a bit of real estate consuulting coming up - physically in Poland but for a German company. i am polish tax resident. They want to deduct German income tax at source. that is 8 perćent higher than the Polish rate - so what happens next April ? Someone owes me 8 percent but I cannot imagine getting that back from either the German or Polish tax offices without some kind of struggle - it would be a few thousand euros though so worth arguing about, but not worth to set up some separate dzialalnosci for it.

Anybody have the same situation - bloggers, coders, skype teachers etc ?

From how I understand it, you (can/should?) provide evidence to the Polish tax office of the tax paid in Germany at source when submitting your PIT. You will account for the tax already paid on your PIT, and the deduction from your Polish tax bill should be automatic. I don't think it's more complicated than that - they will do the hard work with getting the tax returned from the German tax office.

I haven't done it personally, but this is how it was described to me. Whether it's still the same method, I'm not sure.

Had someone in a similar situation but not in real estate. German citizen who was running a small business in Poland while employed full time in Germany.

In Poland they can tell you that they can get the German tax office to return the tax. Theoratical, if all the papers are in order and you find a tax office which has dealt with such before, this should be painless. Realistically it takes a bit of going back and forth. At one time the Polish authorities were asking him for something the German authorities didn't have and then the next it was about the tax codes. Lastly, the German authorities told him clearly that the Polish guys didn't know what they were doing and hence it wasn't going through. It was in the thousands of Euros and ended up taking about 5 months to receive. If you leave it with them and don't keep an eye on the progress they won't do much for you.

CMS, you are suggesting you are supplying consultancy services to the German. Consultants in my world are self employed, why are you not issuing a invoice from the Polish to the German as is standard for professional services.

No, he says that he has some consulting work to do for a German company.


One would imagine that the German company want him to be employed by them. Perhaps their insurance requires that. Perhaps he doesn't want to take legal responsibility for his work. Whatever the reason, the person doing the paying gets to chose how they pay; if they want him on their books in order to do the work, he is on their books or he doesn't do the work.


The thing about consultants is that some people who claim to be consultants are actually employed by nobody. I remember an Indian idiot in Warsaw who claimed to be doing consulting work for one of Poland's largest operators of convenience stores but who in reality didn't even know the names of the two brands of convenience stores that that company has. Any moron can claim to be a consultant, and some morons most certainly do. People who actually are consultants know that they get paid in whatever way the client wants them to be paid and that if they don't like the way the client intends to pay them their only choice is to not do the work.