Where do you pay your tax? The tax micro-account (mikrorachunek) explained

You pay your income tax and your VAT to your own tax micro-account (mikrorachunek podatkowy): a personal bank account number built from your NIP, your tax identification number. It is not your tax office’s account, and it is not your ZUS account. You generate it once, free, and it stays the same for as long as you run your business.

What a micro-account is

Since 1 January 2020, every taxpayer in Poland pays PIT (personal income tax), CIT (corporate income tax) and VAT to a personal account number instead of the tax office’s general account. The money goes to the National Bank of Poland (NBP), and the number itself tells the tax office who paid.

The number has 26 digits, like any Polish bank account, and follows the IBAN standard. It is built the same way for everyone:

So if you see your own NIP inside the number, it is the right kind of account. Still, generate it rather than put it together yourself: the check digits at the front are calculated for you.

Tip: the number stays the same when you move house, move to a different tax office or change your surname. Save it once in your banking app as a trusted recipient.

Watch out: if you close your business, the Ministry says your identifier changes from NIP to PESEL, so from then on you pay to the micro-account built from your PESEL. If you start a business again, you go back to the NIP one.

NIP or PESEL: which one is yours

• You run a JDG (a sole trader business): use your NIP. This covers your income-tax advances, ryczałt (the flat-rate tax on revenue) and VAT.
• You run a sp. z o.o. (a limited company): the company uses the company’s NIP for its CIT, its VAT and the PIT it withholds from salaries. Your own personal taxes, if any, go to your personal micro-account.
• You have no business and are not registered for VAT: use your PESEL (your personal ID number), for example for the annual PIT balance on a salary.

Not sure which number is which? Our guide to NIP, REGON and PESEL explains all three.

How to get your number

There are two official ways, both free:

1. The Ministry of Finance generator. Open the generator, choose NIP or PESEL, type the number and click Generuj (Generate). No login is needed. The page checks only that the number is well formed (its check digit), not that it is yours.
2. e-Urząd Skarbowy, the online tax office. Log in at urzadskarbowy.gov.pl with Profil Zaufany (the free government login), the mObywatel app or your bank login, and copy your micro-account from there. Our guide to government logins explains the options.

Any tax office can also tell you your number. Do not copy it from a forum, an email or a text message (the Ministry warns these can be scams), and do not type it from memory: one wrong digit and the payment is not booked to you.

For foreigners: a foreigner who opens a JDG gets a NIP through CEIDG, the register of sole traders, and that NIP is the one to use. If you owe tax while still waiting for a NIP or PESEL, the Ministry says to pay to your tax office’s account from the official list of tax office accounts, and to write your passport or ID card number in the transfer.

Which taxes go there

The most common mix-up is ZUS, the social insurance institution. A sole trader usually makes two transfers each month:

• ZUS to the NRS, a personal 26-digit ZUS account shown in eZUS (the ZUS online portal), by the 20th of the next month.
• Income tax to the micro-account, also by the 20th of the next month. If you pay it quarterly, it is due by the 20th after the quarter.

If you are a VAT payer, VAT also goes to the micro-account, by the 25th. When the 20th or the 25th falls on a Saturday, a Sunday or a public holiday, the deadline moves to the next working day. Our ZUS guide covers the NRS, and the 2026 deadline calendar lists every date.

Watch out: the old tax office accounts took PIT, CIT and VAT only until 31 December 2019. Since then these taxes go only to the micro-account. If your bank still has an old “Urząd Skarbowy” (tax office) recipient saved for them, delete it.

What to write in the transfer

The Ministry says the tax transfer itself has not changed: only the account number is different. Most Polish banks offer a separate tax transfer (przelew podatkowy, sometimes przelew do US). Use it rather than an ordinary transfer, because it has the fields the tax office reads:

For the annual tax, the Ministry says the title can stay empty when the micro-account, the form type, the period and the amount are filled in.

We do not list form symbols and period codes here, because the Ministry’s page does not publish them for business advances. Pick the tax from your bank’s list or in e-Urząd Skarbowy. The tax information helpline, KIS (Krajowa Informacja Skarbowa), can tell you which symbol applies.

Tip: pay each tax, and each month, in a separate transfer. One transfer with one form type and one period is easy for the tax office to book. A single payment for “PIT and VAT for two months” is not.

Paying from your VAT account

If you are a VAT payer and clients pay you with split payment (mechanizm podzielonej płatności, MPP), part of your money lands on the VAT account your bank opened next to your business account. You cannot spend that money freely, but you can use it for your VAT, your PIT or CIT, and your ZUS contributions. In your banking app, pay the tax to your micro-account (and ZUS to your NRS) from the VAT account instead of the main one.

Paying from a foreign bank

You can pay Polish tax from an account abroad. Write the micro-account in IBAN form: PL followed by the 26 digits. If the bank asks for a BIC or SWIFT code, the Ministry gives NBPLPLPW (the National Bank of Poland).

Three things to know:

• No tax fields. A foreign bank has no Polish tax-transfer template, so there is nowhere to enter the form type and the period. The Ministry’s page does not say what to write instead. The cautious approach is to put your NIP, the tax and the period in the title in plain words, and to ask KIS or your tax office whether that is enough in your case.
• Pay in PLN. Your tax is owed in PLN. If your bank lets you, send the transfer in PLN, so you know exactly how much arrives. If it converts from euro on the way, check that the full PLN amount reached the account and pay any shortfall.
• Allow time. From a bank with no branch in Poland, the tax counts as paid on the day you order the transfer only if the money arrives within the normal execution time for payments. If it arrives later, the day it arrives counts. Do not leave it to the 20th (or the 25th for VAT).

For foreigners: if you live in Poland and run a JDG, a Polish account is simpler, because its tax-transfer template has the fields the tax office reads.

Checking the payment, and fixing mistakes

From a Polish bank account, the tax counts as paid on the day your account is debited, so your bank confirmation proves the date. To check it went to the right place, compare the recipient with your micro-account: the digits after 1010 0071 222 should start with 2 and contain your NIP.

If something went wrong, for example a wrong digit or the wrong period, go to your tax office with the proof of payment. The Ministry says the office will ask you to explain a payment to a number that belongs to nobody. If the number belongs to another taxpayer, the money may be booked to them and you get a reminder that you owe the tax. Tax paid late, or booked to the wrong period, costs late-payment interest: our guide to paying late explains how it is calculated and how to put it right.

Keep every tax-payment confirmation with the month’s other documents, since your accountant or the tax office may ask for them. Komplet, our free Mac app, recognises tax and ZUS transfers on your bank statements and groups them by tax and period, so you can see which months are paid.

What to do next

1. Generate your micro-account with the Ministry’s generator, or look it up in e-Urząd Skarbowy.
2. Save it in your banking app as a tax recipient, and delete any old tax office account.
3. Check that you also have your ZUS account (NRS): it is a different number.
4. Put the 20th (and the 25th if you pay VAT) in your calendar, using our 2026 deadlines.
5. Pay each tax with your bank’s tax-transfer template and keep the confirmation.