In Poland, the obligation to pay health and social contributions is entirely on the employer’s side. As the Article 36(2) of the Social Insurance Law and Article 17(1) and (2) of the Social Insurance Law say, one of the employer’s duties is to enroll the employee in social insurance and to calculate as well as deliver said contributions to ZUS. According to the Article 16 of the Social Security Law of 13th October 1998, the employer is responsible for financing part of the contributions that are related to employee’s employment, whereas the other part is financed by the employee. As for the health contributions, they are referred to in Article 85 (1) of the Law of 27th August of 2004. It determines that the employee’s income finances this said contribution. Employers are also required to pay contributions to the Labour Fund for people who are in an anctive employement relationship. 

Employers who have headquarters or a branch outside of EU must also follow the said guidelines, as it is determined by the Article 21(1) of Regulation (WE) of the European Parliament and the Council of September 16th 2009.  

Transferring obligations from employer to employee 

There are some circumstances thanks to which the obligation to pay social and health insurance contributions can be transferred to the employee. This happens when the employer does not have headquarters or branch in Poland. Obligations are transferred under a contract, which includes the exact obligations of the payer of contributions (Article 21 (2) of Regulation (WE) No. 987/2009). Once the contract is signed, the employee takes on the role as the payer of contributions and reports himself for social security, as well as calculates and pays contributions to the branch of ZUS accordingly to his place of residence. The contract also stipulates that in addition to the monthly salary, the employer must pay the funds that will cover social and health contributions as well as the contributions that relate to the Labour Fund and Solidarity Fund. The contributions related to these two Funds are applied when the contributed income is the minimum wage or 80% of the minimum wage if the employee is at his first year of work. Another requirement is age – 60 for men and 55 for women.  

So how does it work? 

The first step is to contact the head of Inland Revenue Office accordingly to your place of residence in Poland and obtain NIP number. Exemption is applied to:  

• Polish citizens who already have NIP number 
• EU VAT taxpayers 

Next step is to fill out and submit documents: 

• ZUS ZUA or ZUS ZZA 
• ZUS ZAA 
• copy of the agreement concerning the transfer of the obligation to pay contributions 
• copy with the decision to obtain NIP number 

It should be taken into consideration that if an employee has citizenship of one of the EU countries, he/she can apply for PESEL number to the Department of Information Technology Development and State Registry Systems of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Administration. Once PESEL number is secured, the data must be changed in the ZUS documents:  

• ZUS ZIPA 
• ZUS ZIUA 

It is important to take notice of the insurance title code, which is given to the submitted documents. For an employment contract or a contract of mandate, the adequate code will be as follows:  0125, 0126, 0426 lub 0428.  

If the employee has an account in ZUS with a non-agricultural business, when filling out ZUS ZUA and ZUS ZAA documents, the data that is already assigned to the payer’s account should be entered. ZUS will receive notification from both titles, and the settlement declarations will be coded as follows:  

• 01-39 for non-agricultural business 
• 40-49 for taking over the duties of a foreign obligation’s payer 

Tekst based on: https://poradnikprzedsiebiorcy.pl/-przeniesienie-obowiazku-odprowadzania-skladek-zus-na-pracownika