Ryczałt od przychodów ewidencjonowanych in Poland: rates and rules for 2026

The ryczałt od przychodów ewidencjonowanych (a lump-sum tax on recorded revenue) is the simplest of a JDG’s three forms of taxation (a JDG being a sole trader’s business, jednoosobowa działalność gospodarcza): you pay tax on revenue, without deducting costs, at a fixed rate that depends on what you do. In this article you’ll find who can choose the ryczałt, what the ryczałt rates are in 2026 (from 2% to 17%), what the revenue limit is, how to calculate the ryczałt each month with an example, how the ryczałt relates to VAT, and how much programmers and doctors pay.

The rules and amounts are those in force in 2026, checked on 30 September 2026 on biznes.gov.pl, zus.pl, podatki.gov.pl and in the text of the Act.

Ryczałt: a tax on revenue, not on income

In tax, two words mean different things:

• revenue is everything your clients owe you for the goods and services you’ve sold, even if the client hasn’t paid yet, after deducting returns, discounts and cash discounts; if you’re an active VAT payer, the net amount counts;
• income is revenue minus deductible costs (koszty uzyskania przychodu).

The skala podatkowa (the progressive tax scale) and the podatek liniowy (the 19% flat tax) tax income. The ryczałt taxes revenue, so you don’t deduct costs at all: not equipment, not fuel, not office rent. In return, the rate is lower, and the calculation fits in a single step.

That’s why the ryczałt pays off above all where there are few costs: in services built on knowledge and time. A business that buys a lot of goods or invests a lot will usually pay less on the skala or the liniowy. How to compare these three forms on your own figures is described in the article on choosing a JDG’s form of taxation.

From revenue you can deduct only what the Act on the lump-sum income tax lists, including:

• social contributions (pension, disability, sickness, accident) paid in the month, if you don’t deduct them elsewhere;
• 50% of the health contributions (składka zdrowotna) paid;
• a loss from previous years, payments into an IKZE (an individual pension savings account, deductible from income), the thermal-modernisation relief, donations to specified causes and a few other reliefs.

On the ryczałt you can’t file jointly with a spouse, and you can’t deduct the child relief from the ryczałt. If you also have a job, you can deduct the child relief from the tax on your employment contract.

Who can choose the ryczałt

According to biznes.gov.pl, the ryczałt can be chosen by a person running a sole trader’s business, and also by the partners of a civil or general partnership, if they are all individuals and they all choose the ryczałt. The main condition is the revenue limit for the previous year (more on it below). A new business can choose the ryczałt in the year it starts; it applies it from the day of its first revenue.

You can’t choose the ryczałt if:

• you run a pharmacy or a currency exchange office (buying and selling foreign currency), or trade in parts and accessories for motor vehicles, even for part of your revenue;
• you manufacture excise goods (except electricity from renewable sources);
• in the same year you pay the tax card (karta podatkowa) or use a temporary exemption from income tax;
• you sell goods or services to a former or current employer, covering the same activities that are performed for them under an employment contract in the current or the previous tax year.

The last point catches many people who move from a job to a B2B contract with the same company. If this year or last year you do the same thing under an employment contract, the ryczałt is out of the question, and if such revenue appears during the year, from that day until the end of the year you pay tax under the general rules.

You also lose the right to the ryczałt during the year if you earn even part of your revenue from an excluded activity, for example if you start selling car parts. From that day you settle under the general rules and keep a KPiR (the tax revenue and expense ledger); you don’t correct the earlier months.

The revenue limit on the ryczałt in 2026

Under the Act you can use the ryczałt in 2026 if your revenue from the business in 2025 didn’t exceed €2,000,000. Euros are converted into złoty at the average rate of the NBP (the National Bank of Poland) from the first working day of October of the previous year. You don’t count towards the limit revenue corrections under bad-debt relief (ulga na złe długi), for invoices unpaid within 90 days.

A business run on your own and one run in a partnership are counted separately: exceeding the limit in one doesn’t take the ryczałt away in the other. If you exceed the limit during the year, the ryczałt stays with you until the end of that year, and from the next one you need a different form.

The government has adopted a draft of changes to income taxes for 2027, which also concerns the ryczałt limit. It’s still a draft, not law in force: until it’s passed and published, the €2,000,000 limit applies.

Ryczałt rates for 2026 by type of activity

The rate depends on which service or which goods you sell. Below are the most common items from art. 12 of the Lump-Sum Tax Act; the full catalogue is in the Act.

The 8.5% rate is the “default” rate for services: it goes to any service that doesn’t fit any of the higher items. That’s why the question „ryczałt 8,5 – jakie usługi” (“ryczałt 8.5: which services”) has a short answer: all those the Act hasn’t assigned to 17%, 15%, 14%, 12% or 10%.

PKD code or PKWiU

When looking for their rate, people usually type „stawki ryczałtu wg PKD” (“ryczałt rates by PKD”). The PKD code (the activity code from the Polish Classification of Activities) that you give in CEIDG (the Central Register and Information on Business, Poland’s register of sole traders) describes the type of activity. The Act, however, assigns the ryczałt rate according to the PKWiU, the classification of specific services and goods, and it’s the PKWiU symbol of what you sell that decides. PKD and PKWiU often share the same first digits, but not always.

Several rates in one business

If you sell services with different rates, you tax each part of your revenue at its own rate, provided your revenue record (ewidencja przychodów) lets you separate them. If it doesn’t, the tax office will apply 8.5% to revenue with lower rates (2%, 3%, 5.5%), while the higher rates stay higher. Where there’s no record at all, or it doesn’t cover all revenue, the tax office estimates the revenue and applies five times the rate, at most 75%.

The ryczałt in popular professions

The ryczałt in IT: programmer

Software development, software and hardware consultancy, software installation and the management of IT networks and systems have a rate of 12%. IT services outside these items usually fall under another rate, most often 8.5% as other services, so it’s worth checking the PKWiU symbol of what you actually invoice.

For a programmer on a B2B contract, the most important rule is the former-employer rule: the ryczałt is ruled out if you do the same thing for the same company under an employment contract this year or last year.

The ryczałt for a doctor

Healthcare services (PKWiU division 86) have a rate of 14%. This applies, for example, to a doctor or a dentist running their own business. A doctor isn’t a liberal profession under the Act, so the 17% rate doesn’t apply to them.

Translator, accountant and other liberal professions

The professions on the list of liberal professions pay 17%, but only when they work in person, meaning they don’t employ anyone (in a job, under a contract of mandate or a contract for a specific work) for the activities that make up the core of the profession. Someone who employs others for this no longer practises a liberal profession within the meaning of the Act, so the 17% rate doesn’t apply to them, and they look for the rate for their service among the other items.

How to calculate the ryczałt: a monthly settlement with an example

You calculate the ryczałt for each month separately, on that month’s revenue:

1. Add up the month’s revenue from the revenue record.
2. Deduct the social contributions paid in that month.
3. Deduct 50% of the health contribution paid in that month.
4. Round the result to whole złoty and multiply it by your rate.
5. Round the ryczałt amount to whole złoty and pay it into your tax micro-account (mikrorachunek podatkowy).

Example. A programmer on the 12% ryczałt issues invoices for PLN 20,000 net in May 2026. Since the start of the year she has PLN 100,000 of revenue, so, according to biznes.gov.pl, her health contribution falls in the threshold from PLN 60,000 to PLN 300,000. She pays full ZUS (Social Insurance Institution) contributions for 2026, according to ZUS, with voluntary sickness insurance.

She pays the ryczałt for May, PLN 2,136, by 20 June. The same PLN 20,000 of revenue at the 8.5% rate would give PLN 1,513, and at the 17% rate PLN 3,025.

The amount of contributions in 2026 (including the reduced ones) is described in the article on ZUS for JDGs, and the three health-contribution thresholds on the ryczałt in the article on the health contribution.

When and where to pay the ryczałt

• Monthly: by the 20th of the following month, and for December by 20 January of the following year.
• Quarterly: by the 20th of the month after the quarter, and for the last quarter by 20 January. A business that is only just starting can pay quarterly, or one whose revenue in the previous year didn’t exceed €200,000. You report the choice of quarterly payments in your annual return.

You pay the ryczałt into your tax micro-account, monthly and quarterly payments with the form symbol PPE. After the end of the year you file the PIT-28 return (the annual return on the ryczałt) from 15 February to 30 April; for 2026, by 30 April 2027 at the latest. How to fill it in is described in the article on PIT-28 and PIT-36.

Ryczałt and VAT

The ryczałt is an income tax; VAT is an entirely separate tax. Choosing the ryczałt changes nothing in VAT, and whether you’re an active VAT payer changes nothing in your ryczałt rate.

• If you’re an active VAT payer, you calculate the ryczałt on net revenue, without VAT. You settle output VAT separately in JPK_V7M (the monthly VAT file with the return) or JPK_V7K (the quarterly one), and you deduct input VAT from purchase invoices under the rules of the VAT Act, even though on the ryczałt those purchases aren’t a cost.
• If you use the small-business VAT exemption (zwolnienie podmiotowe, art. 113 of the VAT Act), you can be on the ryczałt at the same time. podatki.gov.pl states that in 2026 the exemption threshold is PLN 240,000 of sales a year; details are in the article on the VAT exemption.

The €2,000,000 limit on the ryczałt and the VAT exemption threshold are two different thresholds. Exceeding the VAT threshold doesn’t take away the ryczałt, and exceeding the ryczałt limit doesn’t change your VAT status.

Revenue record (ewidencja przychodów)

On the ryczałt you don’t keep a KPiR, but a revenue record, separately for each year. You enter revenue in it on the basis of invoices, bills or internal vouchers, split by rate. Apart from it, you keep purchase documents and a list of fixed assets and intangible assets.

From 1 January 2026, JDGs on the ryczałt that file JPK_V7M keep the record in a computer program and, after the year ends, send it to the tax office in a JPK_EWP file (the revenue-record file) by 30 April. Everyone else will be covered by this obligation from 1 January 2027. There’s more in the article on the KPiR and the revenue record.

How to choose the ryczałt

You can choose the ryczałt as early as when you set up your business, in form CEIDG-1 (the application to register, change, suspend or close a JDG). As biznes.gov.pl explains, if your business is already running, you file a statement choosing the ryczałt by the 20th of the month after the month in which you earn your first revenue in the year (usually by 20 February), or by the end of the year if your first revenue falls in December. You file the statement at the tax office (urząd skarbowy) or through CEIDG, by changing the data in your entry. The choice also applies in the following years until you change it. The deadlines, changing during the year and the comparison with the other forms are described in the article on a JDG’s form of taxation.

One rate, the month’s revenue and the 20th of the next: the ryczałt is simple if your record is up to date.
💜💙 Your BravoLisa Team

This article is for general information purposes only and does not constitute professional tax, legal, or accounting advice. Every situation is different — consult a qualified professional (tax adviser, accountant, or lawyer) for advice specific to your circumstances. BravoLisa does not accept liability for decisions made based on this information.

Last updated: September 2026. Rates and thresholds can change: always check them on biznes.gov.pl, podatki.gov.pl, zus.pl or with the relevant office.

Sources (7)

Verified on 30 September 2026

1. Biznes.gov.pl — Ryczałt od przychodów ewidencjonowanych
2. Biznes.gov.pl — Jaki PIT dla firmy? Jak wybrać formę opodatkowania przychodów?
3. Biznes.gov.pl — Ile wynosi składka zdrowotna
4. ZUS — Wysokość składek na ubezpieczenia społeczne
5. Podatki.gov.pl — Zwolnienie podmiotowe od podatku VAT
6. ISAP — Ustawa o zryczałtowanym podatku dochodowym od niektórych przychodów osiąganych przez osoby fizyczne (tekst jednolity Dz.U. 2025 poz. 843)
7. ISAP — Ustawa o podatku dochodowym od osób fizycznych (tekst jednolity Dz.U. 2026 poz. 592)