Renting out the flat you bought in Poland

Since 2023 there is nothing to decide. The income tax act states that income from the rental source is taxed in the form of ryczałt od przychodów ewidencjonowanych — a flat tax on revenue. The general progressive scale is no longer available for letting a flat you own privately.

The rates are 8.5% of revenue up to 100,000 zł in a calendar year and 12.5% on the excess. The threshold covers everything you let, not each flat separately. Spouses who own jointly and have filed the statement putting the whole income on one of them share a single 200,000 zł threshold. If you also run a business taxed as ryczałt, the business and the private letting each have their own 100,000 zł limit.

Because the tax falls on revenue, the mortgage interest, the new boiler and the agent's commission all remain your own cost and change the tax bill by nothing. That is the trade for the low rate, and it is why a heavily mortgaged flat can be worse off under ryczałt than the arithmetic first suggests.

The mechanics are light. You calculate the tax yourself and pay it to the tax office by the 20th of the month after the one you received the money in, or quarterly by the 20th after the quarter, with December and the last quarter due by 20 January. There is no monthly declaration. Once a year you file PIT-28, between 15 February and 30 April, and a return filed before 15 February counts as filed on that date. None of this requires registering a business.

• 8.5% up to 100,000 zł of revenue a year, 12.5% above
• 200,000 zł for spouses who filed the joint statement; separate limits for business and private letting
• Payment by the 20th of the following month, or quarterly
• PIT-28 between 15 February and 30 April, with no monthly returns in between

This is where landlords over-declare and overpay. The tax reaches money received by you or placed at your disposal. Where the lease makes the building charge and the utilities the tenant's own liability, those amounts are not your revenue, and the only rent you declare is the rent.

The route the money takes does not decide it. Whether the tenant pays the manager and the supplier directly or reimburses you so you can pay them, what matters is what the lease allocates to whom. Tax practice is settled on this point, and it turns on the contract.

So write the lease so it says so, in terms: rent of X, and separately the charges payable to the wspólnota or spółdzielnia and the utilities, borne by the tenant. A lease that says "rent of 3,500 zł including all charges" makes the whole 3,500 zł your revenue.

Polish law protects tenants strongly enough that ordinary eviction can wait years on the municipality providing social housing. Najem okazjonalny — occasional lease — is the statutory answer, and it is available to you if you are an individual who does not run a business letting property. The lease is for a fixed term of no more than 10 years and must be in writing on pain of nullity.

Three documents go with it. The tenant's statement in the form of a notarial deed, submitting to enforcement and undertaking to vacate the flat within the period stated in your demand. The tenant's indication of another dwelling they could move to. And the consent of whoever holds that dwelling, with a notarially certified signature if you require it. The notary's fee for the tenant statement is capped at a tenth of the minimum wage — 480.60 zł net in 2026.

Then the step that undoes landlords. You must report the conclusion of the lease to the head of the tax office competent for your own place of residence, within 14 days of the day the letting starts. Not from signature; from the start of the lease. And the tenant may demand that you show them the confirmation.

There is no penalty for missing it. The statute simply switches off the two provisions that make the regime worth having, so the accelerated route to recovering the flat disappears and you are left with an ordinary lease and ordinary tenant protection. A late notification cures nothing.

Two more rules apply while the lease runs. Beyond the rent you may collect only charges outside your control, unless the contract provides otherwise, and you may raise the rent only on the terms the contract sets out. The deposit is capped at six months' rent and must be returned within a month of the flat being vacated, less what you are owed.

If you let property as a business rather than privately, the parallel regime is najem instytucjonalny, open to individuals, legal persons and other organisations carrying on a business of letting dwellings, also for a fixed term and also built on a notarial tenant statement.

Meldunek is registration in the population register, and the duty is the tenant's. It gives them no right to the flat and takes nothing from you, which is worth saying plainly because the fear that it does is common and wrong.

Your part is a signature. Where a tenant registers on paper, the owner or another person holding title confirms the stay on the registration form and produces their own document of title for inspection — a contract, a land register extract, an administrative decision or a court ruling.

The deadlines are your tenant's to keep: 30 days from arrival for Polish, EU, EEA and Swiss citizens and their family members, and the fourth day from arrival for any other foreigner. A foreigner staying no more than 30 days is exempt, and one who is not an EU citizen cannot declare a period of temporary stay longer than their residence document allows.

Letting by the night to tourists stops looking like renting out a flat and starts looking like running an accommodation service, and Polish law treats it that way in three separate places.

Income tax. Accommodation services fall under PKWiU 55 and are taxed under ryczałt at the same 8.5% and 12.5% as private letting — the identical rates, reached through a different limb of the statute, and normally as business activity rather than private letting. Where the line runs between the two depends on scale and how you organise it, and it is a question worth putting to an accountant before you start rather than after.

VAT. Letting residential property on your own account exclusively for residential purposes is exempt from VAT. The statute then expressly takes accommodation services out of that exemption, and puts them on the reduced rate, currently 8%. The small-business exemption still applies below the turnover threshold, which rose to 240,000 zł on 1 January 2026.

Property tax. The gap here is the one that hurts. For 2026 the statutory ceiling for a dwelling is 1.25 zł per m² a year, and for a building or part of it occupied for business activity it is 35.53 zł per m² — roughly twenty-eight times as much. The Constitutional Tribunal ruled in 2021 that a property cannot be classed as business-related merely because an entrepreneur possesses it, so ownership by a business is not enough on its own. Where a dwelling is genuinely occupied for business the higher rate applies, and how that test lands on a flat let by the night is fact-specific and contested. Ask the gmina before you assume the residential rate.

EU Regulation 2024/1028 on data collection and sharing for short-term accommodation rental services has applied since 20 May 2026. It is built around a registration number: hosts obtain one, display it in every listing, and platforms check it and report activity data to national authorities through a single digital entry point.

Poland has not enacted the law that would create that system. There is no national register a Polish host can register with, so the registration number the Regulation is built around cannot yet be obtained here. A bill has been before the Sejm since December 2025 and has not been passed.

The practical position for now is a gap rather than a rulebook, and the honest advice is to watch it rather than to act on anything you read about penalties, because the figures circulating come from a draft. When the register opens, registration and displaying the number in listings will be the first obligations to land.

Nothing in that gap suspends the rest. The income tax, the VAT and the property-tax questions above apply today, as do the rules of the building you are letting in.

If the flat is held on a cooperative right, letting it needs no consent from the cooperative, unless letting would change how the flat is used or what it is designated for. Where letting affects the level of your charges, you must notify the cooperative in writing.

In a wspólnota mieszkaniowa the sharp instrument is at the far end. Where an owner is in long-term arrears with the charges, grossly or persistently breaches the house rules, or by their conduct makes the use of other flats or the common parts burdensome, the community may sue for the sale of the flat by auction. An owner whose flat is sold that way has no right to substitute accommodation.

That provision is aimed at conduct rather than at business models, and a stream of weekend guests is exactly the fact pattern neighbours bring under it. Reading the house rules before you list the flat is cheaper than finding out later what they say.

This page describes the position as at 19 August 2026 and explains the rules in general terms. It is not tax or legal advice about your letting, and short-term letting in particular sits on rules that are in motion.

• Personal Income Tax Act, article 9a(6), making ryczałt the only form for private rental income
• Act on flat-rate income tax (ustawa o zryczałtowanym podatku dochodowym), articles 6(1a), 12(1)(4), 12(13), 12(14) and 21
• Act on the protection of tenants' rights, articles 19a–19f, on occasional and institutional leases
• Act on the population register, articles 27, 28, 41 and 42
• VAT Act, article 43(1)(36) and (20), and position 47 of annex 3; the threshold raised to 240,000 zł by Dz.U. 2025 poz. 896 from 1 January 2026
• Act on local taxes and charges, article 5(1)(2), with the 2026 ceilings from M.P. 2025 poz. 726; Constitutional Tribunal judgment of 24 February 2021, SK 39/19
• Regulation (EU) 2024/1028 on data collection and sharing relating to short-term accommodation rental services, applicable from 20 May 2026