How to hire and pay contractors in Poland

How a foreign company hires and pays a contractor in Poland

A Polish contractor works one of two ways. B2B contractors run a registered sole proprietorship (jednoosobowa działalność gospodarcza), invoice your company and pay their own tax, while people without a business work under a mandate contract (umowa zlecenia) or a specific-work contract (umowa o dzieło). Either way, you pay into their Polish bank account or a wallet, and a foreign company with no Polish presence does not run Polish payroll.

For data labeling, with Toku as contractor of record, Toku contracts each contributor, collects invoices and pays them, and your company buys the finished work from Toku. For a full-time hire, see employer of record in Poland, and for the rules in more depth, the Poland contractor hiring compliance guide.

Contractor or employee: the article 22 test

Under Labour Code art. 22 §1, employment means work of a specified kind for pay, under the employer's direction and at a place and time the employer sets. If work is done on those terms it is employment whatever the contract is called (§1^1), and an employment contract may not be swapped for a civil contract while keeping those conditions (§1^2).

The civil-law alternatives are in the Civil Code: the mandate contract (art. 734), other service contracts governed by the mandate rules (art. 750) and the specific-work contract for a defined result (art. 627).

Since 8 July 2026 a district labour inspector can declare an employment relationship by administrative decision when a civil contract hides one and an earlier order to fix it was ignored (Act of 11 March 2026, Dz.U. 2026 poz. 473). The decision applies for labour, tax and social insurance. The Chief Labour Inspector can also issue an individual interpretation, on request, of whether a described arrangement is employment.

• Let contributors choose tasks, hours and place of work, and don't manage them like staff.
• Pay per accepted task or deliverable, not a monthly salary for time.
• Toku offers misclassification protection as an add-on, which suits countries with strong labor protections such as Poland.

Tax registration, invoices and the records you keep

B2B contractors register their business in CEIDG and can start the same day they file (Entrepreneurs' Law art. 17). Since 1 January 2026, an individual whose revenue stays within 225% of the minimum wage in every quarter, and who hasn't run a business in the last 60 months, can work as unregistered activity without CEIDG (Entrepreneurs' Law, art. 5).

Mandate and specific-work income from a business counts as income from personally performed activity (PIT Act, art. 13 pkt 8). When no Polish payer withholds the tax, as with a foreign client, the contractor pays monthly advances themselves by the 20th of the following month (art. 44).

Invoices: services to a foreign business are generally taxed where the customer is based (VAT Act, art. 28b). Polish VAT taxpayers must issue structured invoices through the National e-Invoice System, KSeF, from 1 February 2026 for the largest firms and 1 April 2026 for everyone else, with a relief to 31 December 2026 for invoicing up to PLN 10,000 a month (Ministry of Finance). A foreign buyer receives its copy in a way agreed with the contractor (art. 106gb).

What you keep as the payer: the contract, each invoice, the contractor's NIP or PESEL, the accepted-task records behind each payment and proof of payment. Toku keeps these for every contributor it contracts.

Payment rails, złoty and foreign exchange rules

Poland has no capital controls on receiving payment for services. Under the Foreign Exchange Law, foreign exchange transactions are permitted (art. 3), and the restrictions in art. 9 cover certain capital transactions with countries outside the EU, EEA and OECD, not service income. There is no duty to convert or repatriate fees paid from abroad.

Transfers above the equivalent of EUR 15,000 must go through a bank, payment institution or e-money institution (art. 25). Individuals report balance-of-payments data to the National Bank of Poland only above high thresholds (art. 30).

In practice: pay in złoty, euros or US dollars to the contractor's Polish account, or in stablecoins to their wallet.

Paying contractors in Poland in stablecoins

Yes, contractors in Poland can be paid in stablecoins with Toku. Each contributor can choose USDC or USDT to their own wallet instead of a bank transfer.

As an EU member, Poland is covered by the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA), which defines stablecoins tied to one currency as e-money tokens and regulates the firms that issue and service them. Poland's own act implementing MiCA has been vetoed, and the Polish Financial Supervision Authority (KNF) says no national authority has yet been designated for most of MiCA. Nothing in that stops an individual from receiving stablecoins, so Toku confirms the route for each person.

Selling or spending crypto is capital income taxed at 19% and reported on PIT-38, while swapping one crypto-asset for another is not taxed (Ministry of Finance). Crypto received as a fee is income, and its value on receipt is a question tax rulings answer case by case, so contractors should keep the rate on the payout date. To set it up, talk to us about paying in stablecoins in Poland.

Making the IP transfer valid in Poland

Under the Copyright Act, a contract transferring author's economic rights must be in written form or it is void (art. 53), and so must an exclusive licence (art. 67(5)). Contractors keep their rights unless they transfer them this way: employer ownership applies only to employees (art. 12).

Written form means a handwritten signature, or electronically a qualified electronic signature (Civil Code, arts. 78 and 78^1, matching eIDAS art. 25(2)). A click, a typed name or a standard simple or advanced e-signature does not meet art. 53, so the transfer would be void. E-signature platforms can issue a qualified signature through an EU qualified trust service provider.

• List every field of exploitation: the transfer covers only fields listed in it (art. 41(2)). Name reproduction in digital form, inclusion in datasets, AI training, testing and evaluation, modification, sublicensing and worldwide use, and only fields known at signing count (art. 41(4)).
• Transfer the derivative right expressly: the author keeps the right to authorise derivative works unless the contract says otherwise (art. 46).
• Don't cover all future works: a contract for all of an author's future works is void to that extent (art. 41(3)). Cover each task or deliverable as it is accepted.
• State the fee: remuneration is presumed and must be fair (art. 43), and each field is paid separately unless agreed otherwise (art. 45), so say the per-task fee covers all fields.
• Moral rights cannot be waived or transferred (art. 16), so contracts usually include an undertaking not to exercise them.

Pay data labelers in Poland with Toku

Toku Contributor Payouts contracts each labeler in Poland as contractor or agent of record, collects the copyright transfer with a qualified e-signature and pays per accepted task in złoty, euros, US dollars, USDC or USDT. You send task totals through the mass payouts API or a file, and every payout ties back to its contributor, agreement and tasks.

Toku pays contractors in 100+ countries. Contractor management lists at $19 per contractor per month on the pricing page, and Contributor Payouts is priced on the contributors you actually pay. The API is documented at docs.toku.com.