Cost of Maintaining a company in Poland

Byattorney-at-law Piotr Zakrzewski

Almost every comparison of “company formation in Poland” stops at the wrong number. Founders line up the one-off setup fees, pick the cheapest, and form the company. Then year two arrives — and the costs that actually decide whether a Polish company was a smart move or a slow drain show up for the first time.

This is an honest breakdown of what it costs to keep a Polish company running after the first year: what every company pays regardless of activity, what only applies once you start trading, and the cost almost nobody quotes — the price of running three separate providers who don’t talk to each other.

Why the formation quote tells you almost nothing

Formation is a one-time event. Maintenance is forever. A company set up for a low headline fee and then left with a cheap, hands-off accountant frequently costs more over two years than one set up properly — because the gaps surface as penalties, late filings, missed VAT registrations, and emergency advisory at the worst possible moment.

So the useful question isn’t “what does it cost to open.” It’s “what does it cost to run, correctly, in year two and beyond.” That number has two parts: a fixed minimum every company carries, and a variable layer driven by what your business actually does.

Part 1 — The mandatory minimum (every company pays this)

A Polish limited liability company (sp. z o.o.) is a full accounting entity. Even a dormant company with no sales has obligations that never switch off:

  • Full bookkeeping (księgi rachunkowe) — Poland requires double-entry accounting for every sp. z o.o., not simplified records. This is the recurring backbone cost. At LEXCARTA, accounting starts from €350/month, scaling with transaction volume.
  • Annual financial statements + filing to the court register (KRS/RDF) — prepared, approved by the shareholders, and submitted electronically each year. This is typically billed once a year, often equivalent to one to two months of bookkeeping, and the deadlines are strict.
  • CIT-8 annual corporate income tax return — filed even at a loss, even if dormant.
  • KSeF e-invoicing — with Poland’s national e-invoicing system now in force in 2026, structured invoices must be issued and received through it. There’s a one-time setup and an ongoing integration cost to get this right (we typically run it through Saldeo).
  • Beneficial owner register (CRBR) — must be kept accurate; changes have to be reported within days, not whenever convenient.
  • Registered office — a Polish company needs a valid registered address, renewed annually.

This is the floor. A genuinely dormant company can’t go below it, and “cheaper” usually means something on this list is being skipped — which you discover later, with interest.

Part 2 — Activity-driven costs (only when you actually trade)

This is the layer that makes a single flat “monthly fee” misleading. A company issuing 20 invoices a month is not the same engagement as one selling across eight EU markets through Amazon. The real drivers:

  • VAT registration + monthly JPK_V7 reporting — once you’re VAT-registered (mandatory above the threshold, often advisable below it for cross-border sellers), your bookkeeping moves from periodic to monthly, with structured VAT files filed every month.
  • OSS — One Stop Shop for cross-border B2C sales — if you sell to consumers across the EU, OSS lets you report all of it through Poland instead of registering for VAT in every country. At LEXCARTA, OSS handling is €350 + VAT per reporting period. (For why this is almost always cheaper than multi-country registration, see our dedicated OSS guide.)
  • Intrastat — once your intra-EU goods movements cross the 2026 thresholds, statistical reporting kicks in: PLN 6,000,000 (arrivals) and PLN 2,800,000 (dispatches) for the basic threshold, with detailed reporting at PLN 105,000,000 and PLN 148,000,000 respectively. Most early-stage sellers won’t hit these — but the ones who do need it handled, not discovered in an audit.
  • Payroll — the moment you put anyone on the books (including a board member under certain arrangements), you add ZUS, PIT withholding, and monthly payroll filings, priced per person.
  • EORI, qualified e-signature, and ad-hoc advisory — EORI for customs, a qualified e-signature (from €350) so you can sign and file remotely, and legal/tax advisory billed from €50/hour when a real question lands.

None of these are “hidden” — they’re conditional. The honest way to quote a company is to name the fixed floor, then tell you which of these switches on for your model. That’s what a call with us produces: a number tied to your actual operation, not a brochure rate.

Part 3 — The cost nobody puts on a quote: fragmentation

Here is where most foreign founders quietly lose money — and it never appears as a line item.

The common setup is three separate providers: a formation agent who registered the company and then disappeared, a cheap remote bookkeeper handling the monthly numbers, and — when something goes wrong — a lawyer hired in a panic. Each is responsible for a slice. None is responsible for the seams between them.

So the VAT registration that the accountant assumed the agent did, didn’t happen. The contract the agent didn’t review creates a tax exposure the bookkeeper never saw. The KSeF integration falls between “not my job” and “not my job.” When it breaks, each provider points at the other two — and you pay for the gap in penalties, lost time, and emergency fees that dwarf any setup discount you chased a year earlier.

What LEXCARTA covers under one roof

LEXCARTA is a law firm with an in-house accounting function — not a formation agent that hands you off. That means formation, monthly accounting, tax, VAT/OSS, payroll, registered address, KSeF, compliance, and the legal questions all sit with one team that already knows your file. No handoffs, no seams, no “that’s the other provider.”

  • Company formation and ready-made companies
  • Monthly bookkeeping and annual financial statements — from €350/month*
  • Corporate income tax, including Estonian CIT planning and dividend structuring
  • VAT, OSS (€350 + VAT/period), Intrastat, EORI
  • Payroll and HR filings
  • Registered office and CRBR maintenance
  • dedicated assistance and advisory by a licensed accountant from €50/hour
  • Contract, corporate, and dispute advisory by an attorney-at-law — from €150/hour

The point isn’t to be the cheapest line on a spreadsheet. It’s that the all-in cost of running a Polish company correctly, with one accountable partner, is almost always lower over two years than a discount setup plus the fragmentation tax that follows it.
* we have also lower fees starting from €150/month for small companies – VAT reporting only.

Get a number tied to your business

Because the real cost depends on your volumes, your VAT position, and where you sell, the only honest figure is one built around your model. Tell us what you’re running, and we’ll lay out the fixed floor, the variables that apply to you, and a single monthly number to keep the company compliant and quietly running.

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