Hire One Employee in Poland — No Entity, No EOR

Is this for you?

You have found a specific person in Poland — an engineer, analyst, designer, support or operations hire — and you want them on your team quickly and cleanly. You would rather they were genuinely yours: a direct contract, full loyalty, room for stock or ESOP, not a name rented through a platform.

The two alternatives both have a catch. Setting up a Polish subsidiary is affordable in itself — a one-off fee from €1,000–5,000 with us, plus statutory costs — but a standing company then costs money to run every month (accounting, statutory filings, compliance, corporate administration), whether it employs two people or twenty; for a single hire or a small team that ongoing weight is often hard to justify. An EOR platform works, but it inserts a third party as the legal employer and charges a per-head fee on top of salary and tax. This model gives you the direct relationship without the entity and without the middleman.

This usually fits when: the role is not a sales role, the person works remotely from their own home in Poland, and your company has no office or fixed place of business there. Software engineers, data analysts, designers, researchers, HR and support roles are the typical straightforward cases. One hire or a small team, a clear job description, a real salary — that is the standard scenario we set up in a few working days.

It needs a closer look when the role carries sales authority, involves management decisions made from Poland, comes with a leased office — or your company is based outside the EU/EEA (we handle those case-by-case). Two of those situations deserve honesty rather than a sales pitch. Neither is a dealbreaker on its own — but each is a reason to check the role before you commit, which is exactly what the assessment is for.

Permanent establishment (PE). If the person negotiates or concludes contracts on your behalf in Poland — a sales role with authority — or regularly makes key management decisions, or works from an office your company leases, your company can create a taxable presence, bringing corporate tax and reporting obligations. No structure, ours or a platform’s, makes that risk disappear, and it can grow as a role evolves. We screen the specific role up front with a licensed tax adviser and, where the risk is real, tell you plainly and suggest an alternative. “No entity needed” is not a promise of tax neutrality — PE is decided on the facts.

Contractor reclassification. Poland’s labour inspection is being strengthened under a 2026 reform, letting an inspector treat a B2B or civil-law contract as employment. A genuine employment contract — which is what this model gives you — substantially mitigates that risk. It does not remove the other duties every Polish employer has (working time, health and safety, records), so it is one strong reason to employ properly, not the only thing to get right.

This is probably not the right route when you want a third party to be the legal employer (that is what an EOR is for), you need a full Polish subsidiary for a larger local operation, or the person is only posted temporarily and A1 / posting status still applies.

Before you decide, we check four separate things: the employee’s tax residency and any treaty (this governs income tax); the country basis for the social-security mechanism (the EU/EEA/Switzerland route, explained below); the scope of the role for PE; and whether employment or another model fits your plans. An honest read on these four is worth more than a fast yes.

What this means for the person you are hiring

The person you hire gets a genuinely good deal — and they deserve the full picture, not just the upside.

They get a full Polish employment contract under the Labour Code: paid holiday (20 or 26 days), sick leave, social insurance on the full salary (so pension and healthcare accrue normally), and an employment contract is generally treated more favourably by banks than B2B. They do not open a sole proprietorship (JDG), issue invoices, or carry the “fake self-employment” exposure the strengthened inspection targets.

The one thing to be clear about: under this model the employee is registered as the person who carries out the contribution filings, so formally those are in their name. That is a real legal role, not just paperwork — if funds did not arrive on time, the authorities would look to the registered person first. That is exactly why the model is built around the employer funding the full cost, in full and on time, with the terms fixed in writing, and with us calculating and preparing every filing so nothing is missed. The employer is contractually bound to fund it; if it ever failed to, the employee would have a claim against the employer. We make sure the employee understands the role they hold — a plain-language briefing is part of setup.

How we help

We run the local side end to end, as one point of contact:

• Assessment — we confirm the legal basis for your country and screen the role’s PE risk together with a licensed tax adviser, then recommend a model. Free to start; genuinely complex cases may need paid advisory work from our partner lawyer and tax adviser, and we tell you that before any cost.
• Setup — a bilingual employment contract under Polish law, the payer arrangement, and the HR documentation a Polish employer needs: personnel files, the mandatory written information, data-protection (RODO) paperwork, and ZUS registration by power of attorney. Where third parties are required — pre-employment medical checks and health-and-safety training — we tell you what is needed and coordinate it.
• Ongoing — each month we calculate the contributions and the income-tax advance at the correct NBP rate, prepare the filings, and give you and the employee the exact figures and the statutory deadlines. You fund the employee directly; the contributions and tax are settled from there. We never hold or move your money.

Typical time from decision to a working employee: a few working days, once documents and the mandatory checks are done.

The legal basis — for your CFO and legal team

If you want the mechanism in precise terms, here it is. The pieces sit on different tracks, and keeping them separate is the point.

How the arrangement works. The employee signs a real Polish employment contract directly with your (EU/EEA/Swiss) company and is registered as the technical payer of social-security contributions. This is expressly provided for in EU law: Article 21(2) of Regulation (EC) 987/2009, which lets employer and employee agree that the employee carries out the contribution obligations while the employer funds them and informs ZUS. Certa Poland runs the local side — contract, HR documentation, registrations, and the monthly calculations — as your operational partner, not as the employer.

What Article 21(2) covers — and what it does not:

• Social security (ZUS): covered. Article 21(2) is what lets the contribution obligations be carried out locally without your company holding a Polish entity.
• Income tax (PIT): separate. It follows the employee’s residency and the applicable treaty; a foreign employer with no permanent establishment in Poland is not the PIT payer, so it is not settled by the social-security mechanism, and the applicable treatment depends on the employee’s circumstances.
• Labour law: separate again. Work performed in Poland is governed by Polish mandatory labour rules — by force of Article 8 of Rome I, not merely because the contract says so — so the contract is built around them, not the other way round. This is a full employment contract under the Polish Labour Code.

Money flow. Directly from employer to employee. Certa never touches the funds — we calculate the contributions and PIT and pass the figures to you and the employee. We never hold your money.

Outside the EU/EEA. For employers in countries with a bilateral social-security agreement (USA, Canada and others), a different national procedure applies and can be materially different — sometimes another model or a local payer registration is needed instead. We assess each such case individually, and for some countries this route may not be available. If your company is outside the EU/EEA, ask us for a case-by-case check.

When it is time to talk to us

Reach out when you have a candidate in Poland and a start date, when a candidate has asked for an employment contract instead of B2B, or when a Deel/Remote quote or a subsidiary estimate has made you look for a better route. The initial assessment is free and honest — including telling you if this model is not right for your case.

Related: what your social-security obligations in Poland actually are, how the monthly payroll runs, and our packages and pricing. Posting someone temporarily instead of hiring? See A1 and posted workers.

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This page is general information about a service, not legal or tax advice. The specifics of your case are confirmed case by case, with licensed legal and tax advisers where the law requires it.