Accounting for Foreign-Owned Companies in Poland

For finance teams and directors of foreign-owned companies — subsidiaries and branch offices already operating, or about to start operating, in Poland. If you are looking for help registering a company from scratch, see setting up a Polish company first. This page is not for Polish sole proprietors (JDG) and not a job listing.

The short answer

A foreign-owned Polish presence — whether a sp. z o.o. subsidiary (a separate Polish legal entity) or a branch of your foreign company (not a separate legal entity, but registered and taxed in Poland for its local activity) — carries statutory bookkeeping, payroll and VAT duties in Poland, plus one extra layer: reconciling Polish books with a foreign head office, in English, on a schedule the head office can actually use. We run that layer as an ongoing service: monthly accounting, payroll, VAT and statutory compliance, for a flat fee, so the finance team back home gets numbers it can read without a translator.

Who this is for

• Finance leads and controllers at a foreign parent company whose Polish subsidiary or branch needs its books, payroll and VAT run properly, month after month.
• Foreign-owned sp. z o.o. companies past the registration stage, looking for an English-speaking accounting partner rather than a local firm that only works in Polish.
• Branch offices of foreign companies with Polish statutory obligations but no head-office presence on the ground to manage them.
• Companies about to register who want the accounting and payroll partner lined up before day one, not scrambling for one after (see company registration for the setup side).

Not for: individuals looking for personal tax advice, Polish-founded JDG/sole proprietorships, or companies wanting a one-off filing with no ongoing relationship.

What’s in scope

• Monthly bookkeeping under Polish accounting rules, kept in a form your head office can reconcile against its own books.
• Payroll for your Polish-based staff — contributions, income-tax advances, payslips, statutory filings.
• VAT — registration status, monthly/quarterly filings, and the practical handling of cross-border invoicing with your head office.
• Statutory compliance — the recurring filings and deadlines a Polish entity owes ZUS and the tax office, tracked and met.
• One point of contact, in English, for a function that in most foreign-owned companies otherwise sits with a local firm nobody at head office can talk to directly.

What this page does not cover: registering the company itself (see company registration), and legal or tax advisory opinions (we work alongside a licensed tax adviser for anything beyond routine accounting — see below).

When it’s a straightforward engagement — and when it needs a closer look

Usually straightforward: a single Polish entity, standard domestic VAT, payroll for a handful of employees, routine intercompany invoicing with one foreign parent. Most subsidiaries and branches we take on start here, and the monthly rhythm settles quickly.

Needs a closer look before we quote a scope: multiple Polish entities under one group, cross-border VAT chains or OSS registrations, complex intercompany transactions that touch transfer pricing, historical filings that need reconstructing or catching up, or a branch structure where head office wants group-consolidated reporting on a non-standard timetable. None of this is a reason to say no — it’s a reason to scope it properly at the assessment rather than quote a number blind.

How we work

We start with an assessment of your current setup — entity type, VAT status, headcount, what’s already been filed and by whom — so the monthly scope is accurate from the first invoice, not adjusted after surprises show up. Once scope is confirmed, we run the monthly cycle: bookkeeping, payroll, VAT and filings, with a fixed reporting rhythm your head office can plan around. Anything that touches a legal or tax judgment call — a transfer-pricing question, a treaty interpretation, a permanent-establishment read — goes to our partner tax adviser rather than being decided informally.

Pricing

Ongoing accounting, payroll and compliance for a foreign-owned Polish entity starts from €1,000/month + VAT and scales with the volume and complexity of the books — the number of accounting operations, VAT settlements, transfer pricing, VAT OSS and similar. It is not a percentage of payroll and does not track salary levels; the confirmed monthly figure comes out of the assessment, in writing, before you commit.

This €1,000/month is for running the full accounting of a Polish entity of your own — a sp. z o.o. or a branch. If you only need to employ one person without setting up an entity, that is a different service — employment compliance without an entity, €300 per employee per month, net of VAT. Two different jobs, priced separately. See the monthly price for running a Polish entity, and how it sits next to our other routes.