What the inspector can now do
The amendment to the Act on the Państwowa Inspekcja Pracy (Dz.U. 2026 poz. 473) was published on 7 April 2026 and took effect three months later, implementing a milestone of Poland’s recovery plan on labour market segmentation.
The sequence starts with an instruction to remedy the breach. If the employer does not, the district inspector issues a decision establishing that an employment relationship exists. An appeal goes to the labour court within a month and suspends it, except for employees under special protection. The effects run forward from the decision date, so the decision itself creates no retrospective liability, and a twelve-month window lets an employer that converts contracts voluntarily avoid liability for the offence.
Two points are easy to miss. There is no carve-out for sole traders: the entrepreneur test that would have shielded registered businesses was dropped, so a developer’s JDG is examined against Art. 22 § 1 of the Kodeks pracy like any other arrangement. And prospective effect does not close the historic exposure. Back social security contributions with interest, income tax, holiday pay, overtime and notice periods still come through ZUS decisions and court claims under Art. 189 of the Code of Civil Procedure, which the inspection findings make far easier to bring.
What actually decides the classification
Art. 22 § 1 lists the features of employment: work of a specified kind, under the employer’s direction, at a place and time the employer designates, for remuneration. Art. 22 § 1(1) makes the name of the contract irrelevant, and Art. 22 § 1(2) prohibits replacing an employment contract with a civil-law contract where those features are present.
Courts weigh which features predominate. In II PK 189/14 the Supreme Court considered a self-employed contractor whose cooperation agreement reproduced his previous job exactly: fixed monthly pay, presence between 8 and 16, daily reports, a company car and tasks assigned by the company. Employment was found.
In an IT setting the risk markers are familiar. Mandatory stand-ups at a fixed hour, leave approved through an internal system, no right to send a substitute, company laptop and email, work for one client only, monthly remuneration rather than payment per deliverable, a job title in the org chart.
The structure that survives scrutiny looks different: statements of work with defined deliverables and acceptance, a genuine right of substitution, the contractor’s own equipment and insurance, freedom to serve other clients, and invoices tied to output. Moving an existing employee onto B2B for the same duties fails on its face, and it also costs the contractor the flat tax or lump-sum regime for that year.
The cross-border layer
Most Polish IT companies contract with developers who live abroad, which adds three problems the domestic debate ignores.
Social security coordination does not reach them. Regulation 883/2004 applies inside the EU and EEA. Poland has bilateral agreements with Ukraine, in force since 2013, and with Belarus, since April 2022, but none with Georgia, Kazakhstan or Armenia. Each country’s own rules then decide where contributions are due.
A contractor abroad who habitually concludes contracts in the company’s name, or plays the principal role in concluding them, can also create a permanent establishment for the Polish company in that country. Keeping signature authority in Poland is cheap insurance.
Third, a developer physically in Poland needs a residence title that permits business activity. The Act of 20 March 2025 on entrusting work to foreigners has applied since June 2025, and the special regime for Ukrainian citizens, wound down by the Act of 23 January 2026, now runs to 4 March 2027.
The intellectual property gap
Under Art. 74(3) of the Copyright Act, rights to a computer program created by an employee within their duties pass to the employer automatically. A B2B contract gives you nothing comparable. Assignment must be in writing under pain of nullity (Art. 53), must list the fields of exploitation expressly (Art. 41(2)), and cannot cover fields unknown at the time (Art. 41(4)). Add consent to derivative works, an undertaking not to exercise moral rights, and a flow-down clause binding the contractor’s own staff and subcontractors.
Due diligence in a funding round or a trade sale tests exactly these documents, and a reclassification file sitting alongside them is an uncomfortable combination.
REVERA recommendations
- Audit contracts against practice, not against the template. The template rarely fails; the working arrangement does.
- Use the voluntary conversion window that runs to July 2027 for the roles that clearly do not survive the test.
- Rewrite genuine B2B relationships around deliverables, substitution and independence, and then run them that way.
- Close the IP chain: written assignment, listed fields, derivative works, moral rights, subcontractor flow-down.
- Map contractors by country of residence for social security, withholding and permanent establishment, and check residence titles against the March 2027 date for Ukrainian nationals.
Arbitration & IT Disputes practice audits contractor structures for IT companies, prepares B2B and employment documentation, and advises on cross-border teams, tax and intellectual property.
