Poland VAT rate

What this value means

THE SINGLE MOST DANGEROUS TRAP IN POLISH VAT DATA: art. 41 ust. 1 of the VAT Act still reads 'Stawka podatku wynosi 22 %'. THAT IS NOT THE RATE IN FORCE. Since 1 January 2011 a temporary override has continuously displaced it, and the operative provision today is art. 146ef ust. 1 pkt 1, which sets the art. 41(1) rate at 23 %. Anyone who reads the base article, or who pulls the ORIGINAL 2004 publication of the Act rather than the consolidated text, will confidently serve 22 % and be wrong. The chain of overrides, all verified in the consolidated text on 2026-07-22, is: art. 146a (1 Jan 2011 to 31 Dec 2018) -> art. 146aa (from 1 Jan 2019) -> art. 146ea (year 2023 only) -> art. 146ef (from 1 Jan 2024, current). The 23 % level itself has been unbroken since 1 January 2011. THE FULL 2026 RATE SET, from art. 146ef ust. 1: standard 23 % (pkt 1); reduced 8 % (pkt 2) for goods and services in zalacznik nr 3 — the base article art. 41 ust. 2 says 7 %, again overridden; super-reduced 5 % (art. 41 ust. 2a, zalacznik nr 10 — basic foodstuffs, books, periodicals, baby goods; NOT overridden, so 5 % is read straight from the base article); flat-rate farmer refund 7 % (pkt 3); ryczalt for taxi services 4 % (pkt 4); 0 % for intra-EU supplies (art. 41 ust. 3) and exports (art. 41 ust. 4). SUNSET MECHANISM — WATCH ITEM: art. 146ef ust. 1 ties the elevated rates to Polish defence spending, running the period from 1 January 2024 to the end of the year in which the sum of the expenditures referred to in art. 40 ust. 1 pkt 2 ustawy z dnia 11 marca 2022 r. o obronie Ojczyzny (as set for that year in the budget act in the wording in force on 31 July of that year, plus the financial plan of the Fundusz Wsparcia Sil Zbrojnych, excluding planned internal financial flows) relates to GDP as defined in art. 40 ust. 2. Art. 146ef ust. 2 requires the Minister of Finance to announce the END of the elevated-rate period by obwieszczenie in Monitor Polski, by 31 October of the qualifying year; when it ends, the rates revert to the pre-2011 22 % and 7 %. NO SUCH OBWIESZCZENIE HAS BEEN PUBLISHED: a search of the Monitor Polski register for the whole period 2024-01-01 to 2026-07-22 returned only unrelated Ministry of Finance notices (minimum motor-vehicle tax rates), so 23 % remains in force. The precise polarity of the statutory condition is genuinely awkward to read in the abstract and third-party commentary states it both ways; the operative fact for this record is the absence of the terminating obwieszczenie, not any inference about future defence budgets. Do not serve 22 % on the strength of a press article predicting the reversion. NOT A RATE CHANGE: four acts amended the VAT Act between the June 2025 consolidation and today (Dz. U. 2025 poz. 896, 1203, 1541 and 1811, and 2026 poz. 507 and 846); the texts of the three VAT-specific ones were checked on 2026-07-22 and NONE mentions art. 41 ust. 1, art. 146ef or a 23 % rate — they concern KSeF e-invoicing and CEIDG. ACCESS QUIRKS: api.sejm.gov.pl/eli/acts/DU/2004/535/text.pdf returns the 2004 ORIGINAL, not the current law — you must first resolve the newest entry under the 'Inf. o teksce jednolitym' reference list (currently DU/2025/775) and fetch that act's text. The consolidated PDF is about 4.7 MB and roughly 200 pages; pdftotext needs -enc UTF-8. Equivalent human-readable landing pages are isap.sejm.gov.pl/isap.nsf/DocDetails.xsp?id=WDU20250000775 and eli.gov.pl/eli/DU/2025/775.

Earlier values

Get it programmatically

curl https://euroref.dev/v1/pl/vat
# $0.001 per call — x402 on Base (USDC). No key, no signup.
# History:    curl https://euroref.dev/v1/pl/vat/history?from=2020-01-01
# Provenance: curl https://euroref.dev/provenance/pl/vat

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