Poland
Central Europe's largest market, the region's fastest incorporation — and a register of counterparty bank accounts (the white list)
Poland is the nearest large market for a Slovak company: thirty-eight million people, the same customs union, no language barrier that cannot be crossed. A company is incorporated online in one to three days and profit tax for small taxpayers is 9 %. The price is an administration finer-grained than at home: invoices are reported electronically, payments above the statutory limit must go to an account listed on the VAT white list, and for certain goods the split-payment mechanism is compulsory. The consequence of an error is the loss of the VAT deduction — not a fine, the deduction.
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Recent trade news from this country's authorities and newsrooms — tariffs, taxes, sanctions, currency, imports and exports. Headlines are in the original language; the article opens at the publisher. We add no comment.
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Setting up a company
Setting up a company and tax are the part of the profile you cannot assemble elsewhere in an afternoon. The rest of the page is open.
- ·Legal forms
- ·Minimum capital
- ·How long registration takes
Taxes
Setting up a company and tax are the part of the profile you cannot assemble elsewhere in an afternoon. The rest of the page is open.
- ·Corporate income tax
- ·VAT
Visas and residence
Setting up a company and tax are the part of the profile you cannot assemble elsewhere in an afternoon. The rest of the page is open.
- ·Short stay
- ·Work permit
- ·Residence
What it makes and needs
Furniture, food processing, automotive parts, household appliances, building materials, IT services and logistics. Poland is both a large producer and a large buyer — for a Slovak company it is more often a market for sub-assemblies and services than for finished goods, because domestic production competes hard in finished goods.
Money and payments
The złoty (PLN), freely convertible, floating. The euro is commonly used in trade, but the contract currency is usually the złoty — on longer contracts an exchange-rate clause is used.
Importing into their market
The Union's single market — no duty is paid and no customs declaration is filed. Goods move freely; no proof of origin and no preference is needed. What replaces the customs work is tax work: a supply to a VAT-registered customer in Poľska is an intra-Community supply, exempt with the right to deduct, and the customer accounts for the tax. It depends on a valid VAT number checked in VIES and on proof of transport — without both, the exemption falls away and you pay the tax.
THE WHITE LIST AND SPLIT PAYMENT — two Polish specialities that cost money. A payment to a company registered for Polish VAT must, above the statutory limit, go to an account shown on the VAT white list (biała lista); paying to any other account costs you the deduction as a business expense and makes you jointly liable for the counterparty's VAT. For goods in Annex 15 to the VAT Act the split-payment mechanism (MPP) is also compulsory: the tax goes to the supplier's separate account. Checking an account is one query against the register and takes seconds; it is done before a payment, not after.
Possible change — we are checking it against this report: CPN przyhamował inflację. Ale 2,5-procentowy cel pozostaje przekroczony (Bankier.pl, 2026-10-30)
If people travel with the goods — installation, servicing, training — that is posting of workers under Directives 96/71/EC and 2018/957. It requires notification before work starts, the host country's minimum wage and allowances, documentation in the host country's language, and an A1 certificate for each posted worker. Inspections are frequent in all three of these states and the fines are high.
Possible change — we are checking it against this report: CPN przyhamował inflację. Ale 2,5-procentowy cel pozostaje przekroczony (Bankier.pl, 2026-10-30)
Outlook
What to watch: the roll-out of the compulsory KSeF e-invoicing system, which will change how invoicing works in Poland; wage costs, rising fastest in the region and steadily erasing the price advantage; and investment in the ports of Gdańsk and Gdynia, which is making Poland the gateway for the whole of Central Europe.
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A visa, legalising a document, an invitation letter, the commercial attaché before a trade fair — these only go through a mission. Below are the official registers rather than transcribed addresses: missions move and consular hours change several times a year, so a link to the register stays current where a transcript would not.
Where a country has no mission in Bratislava or Prague it is usually accredited from Vienna, Berlin or Warsaw — the register says which.
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