Since July 8, 2026, the Labor Inspectorate (PIP) can reclassify a B2B contract as an employment contract on its own, no court needed. Here is what actually changed, who it affects, and what to do before the one-year amnesty window closes.

PIP 2026 in short
  • PIP can now reclassify a B2B contract as employment on its own, without a court.
  • This also covers contracts already running on July 8, 2026, not only new ones.
  • Until July 8, 2027, an amnesty window lets you switch voluntarily without a fine for the past misclassification.
  • Fines rose to 2,000-60,000 zł, up to 90,000 zł only in the narrow case of an affected worker registered as a maintenance debtor (see corrected table below).
  • ZUS, the tax office (KAS) and PIP now share data in one system, suspicious patterns get flagged automatically.
  • If your residence card is based on a JDG, reclassification affects your legal stay, not just your finances.

The sections below cover the full mechanics of the reform, contractor risk profiles, and exact reclassification costs.

What PIP is, and why everyone is suddenly talking about it

PIP (Państwowa Inspekcja Pracy, the State Labor Inspectorate) is the government body that checks whether companies comply with Polish labor law. Until July 8, 2026, PIP could only draft a report and go to court if it believed a B2B contract was really disguised employment. A court had to decide, and that meant months or years of proceedings.

The Act of March 11, 2026 amending the Act on the State Labor Inspectorate changes that. Now PIP itself, through a decision of the district labor inspector, can determine that an employment relationship exists between you and the company, even if on paper you run a sole proprietorship (JDG) and issue a monthly invoice. This is the most significant change in years for anyone working in Poland as a contractor.

How an inspector decides your B2B is really an employment contract

The inspector’s decision rests on a single article: Art. 22 § 1 of the Polish Labor Code. It defines an employment relationship through four features:

FeatureWhat it means in practice
Work of a specific kindYou have a defined role or a steady stream of tasks, not one-off projects
Direction from the clientYou’re assigned tasks, your presence is checked, there are daily reports or stand-ups
Place and time set by the clientYou have a fixed schedule, work from the company’s office, mandatory hours
Pay for the work itself, not for a resultThe same invoice amount every month, regardless of how much you actually delivered

The law directly bans replacing an employment contract with a civil-law one if the actual working conditions match these four features. The contract’s name (“umowa o świadczenie usług,” B2B, JDG) is irrelevant. The inspector looks at what really happens: who assigns the tasks, who sets the schedule, what the invoice looks like.

A contract’s title protects no one. PIP evaluates actual working conditions, not the document you signed.

How reclassification actually happens: two steps, not one

The process has two separate stages, and understanding this matters: at the first stage, you can still fix things.

Step 1: Order for correction (Art. 11(2) of the PIP Act). The inspector points out the violation in writing and gives time to fix it. Before doing so, they must let both parties to the contract present their position.

Step 2: Decision (Art. 11(1)(7a) of the PIP Act). If the order isn’t followed, the district labor inspector issues a decision confirming an employment relationship. This is already an administrative decision, not a proposal.

The decision sets everything an employment contract needs, even if the original documents didn’t cover it: contract type (open-ended by default), the date it was concluded, the workplace, working hours, and pay. If data is missing, the law applies a default: full-time work and the minimum wage.

You can appeal to a district court within a month, but filing an appeal does not suspend the consequences for ZUS.

Does this apply to contracts signed before July 8, 2026

Yes. This is the single most important practical point, and where most of the confusion comes from.

The law includes a transitional provision (Art. 14 of the new act): the new rules apply to civil-law contracts concluded before the law’s entry into force and still running on that day. In other words, if your B2B contract was active on July 8, 2026, it falls under the new rules regardless of when you signed it, in 2022, 2023, or 2024.

Example (illustrative case). Elena is a developer working under a JDG for a single client since 2022. A stable invoice amount every month, a fixed schedule in Slack, daily reports to a project manager. The contract was signed long before the new law. Does Elena’s situation fall under PIP’s new rules? Yes. The date the contract was signed doesn’t matter. What matters is that the contract is still running after July 8, 2026, and the actual working conditions match the four features from Art. 22 § 1 of the Labor Code.

The amnesty window: one year to fix things without a fine

The law gives a transition period precisely so that companies and contractors can switch to the correct form of cooperation on their own, without inspector pressure.

Art. 16 of the new act provides that if a company voluntarily, within 12 months of the law’s entry into force, brings the relationship in line with the law by signing an employment contract, it is not liable for the fine under Art. 281 § 1(1) of the Labor Code for the past misclassification itself.

In practice: until July 8, 2027, you can switch from B2B to an employment contract without a fine for the prior period. This does not, however, cancel any ZUS or tax arrears from the past if PIP or ZUS discover them separately. The amnesty window covers the administrative fine only, not outstanding debts.

Until July 8, 2027, a one-year amnesty window applies for a voluntary switch to an employment contract.

What reclassification costs: fines, ZUS, and taxes

Labor Code fines have doubled compared to previous years.

ViolationBefore July 8, 2026After July 8, 2026
Signing a civil-law contract instead of an employment one (Art. 281 § 1 LC)1,000-30,000 zł2,000-60,000 zł
Same violation, if the affected worker is a registered maintenance (alimony) debtor in the Krajowy Rejestr Zadłużonych, a narrow special case, not general recidivism (Art. 281 § 2 LC)1,500-45,000 zł3,000-90,000 zł
Violating pay-related obligations (Art. 282 § 1 LC)1,000-30,000 zł2,000-60,000 zł

Source: Art. 3 of the Act of March 11, 2026, amending Art. 281-283 of the Labor Code.

Correction vs. the original published version: the row above was previously labeled simply “repeat violation.” That is imprecise: Art. 281 § 2 LC does not create a general recidivism penalty. The 3,000-90,000 zł range is triggered only by the KRZ maintenance-debtor circumstance described above. An employer’s second, third, etc. ordinary B2B-misclassification offense is still sentenced within the standard 2,000-60,000 zł range, at the court’s discretion. PIP fine tiers also include mandate vs. court proceedings, criminal liability, and unrelated, separate fines for illegal employment of foreigners.

Besides the fine, there’s the ZUS arrears. One detail often surprises clients: money already paid as a sole proprietor is not lost. The new Art. 38b of the Social Insurance System Act explicitly states that contributions already paid for a person as a sole proprietor or a mandate contractor are credited against future arrears as if they were an employee’s contributions. The employer only pays the difference.

For example: a sole proprietor was paying preferential ZUS contributions of around 300 zł a month. Full employer contributions for an employee run around 2,500 zł a month. The difference the employer would have to pay retroactively for each past month works out to roughly 2,200 zł plus interest. (This is a simplified illustration: actual 2026 ZUS rates are roughly 456 zł/month for preferential and roughly 1,927 zł/month for full social contributions on the sole-proprietor side; the exact employer-side gap depends on the salary base assumed.)

The statute of limitations for ZUS claims is 5 years, and it is suspended while an appeal against a PIP decision is being reviewed. In other words, appealing a decision doesn’t “lock in” the limitation period, it only postpones when it ends.

How PIP, ZUS, and the tax office now see one shared picture

Before 2026, PIP, ZUS, and the tax office (KAS) worked separately. Each authority kept its own database, and matching information manually was slow and expensive.

The new Art. 68ac of the Social Insurance System Act creates a single telecommunication data-sharing system between ZUS, PIP, and KAS to analyze the risk of labor law violations, illegal employment, and tax non-compliance. Through this system, ZUS shares data with PIP on insured persons: the type of insurance title (employee, mandate contractor, or sole proprietor), the amount of contributions paid, employer details, and the number and citizenship of insured foreigners.

The practical consequence: the system automatically flags suspicious patterns, one person invoicing only one client every month, an employer registering 10 contractors as sole proprietors instead of employees, income that doesn’t match the form of employment. Such companies and contractors move to the top of the inspection priority list.

The new shared database between ZUS, the tax office, and the Labor Inspectorate automatically flags suspicious B2B arrangements.

What to do right now: a practical checklist

1. Check whether your contract really describes an outcome, not a role. A specific job title, subordination to a manager, or fixed hours in the contract is a risk factor. 2. Count how many clients you actually serve. One client for years, the same invoice amount every month, a standard working day: that combination is risky. 3. Look at who provides the equipment and workplace. If the company, not you, provides the laptop, office, and software, that supports an employment relationship. 4. Check whether your residence card is based on your JDG. If it is, reclassification affects the legal basis of your stay in Poland, and that deserves a separate check from the financial risk. 5. Calculate the ZUS cost difference between a sole proprietorship and an employment contract for your specific situation. The exact amount depends on your tax regime, and without running the numbers you can’t tell whether switching is worthwhile or risky. 6. Use the amnesty window before July 8, 2027 if your situation is risky. The earlier you start, the more time you have to prepare documents and talk to the employer.

What to do with this information

Reading the law isn’t enough to understand your own risk, the outcome depends on the specific contract, industry, number of clients, and payment structure. MojaFirma offers separate formats for a single contractor and for a company with multiple B2B contractors.

If you work under your own JDG. The basic format is an online B2B audit: you fill in a questionnaire about your situation (one JDG, one client) and get a report within 48 hours with a risk category (low, moderate, high, critical) and three priority recommendations. If your specific contract needs a deeper look, the next step is a one-on-one consultation: 60 minutes with a specialist who reviews your actual contract, assesses the impact on your residence card (if you’re a foreigner), and gives written recommendations.

If you own or run HR for a company with multiple B2B contractors. A single-JDG audit won’t fit here, the risk comes from the system as a whole, not from one contract. For that, there’s a separate, much larger format, a B2B operating model audit, which checks everything at once: the contracts themselves, invoices and KSeF, internal communication (Slack, Teams, Jira), HR processes, onboarding, and offline infrastructure, exactly what a PIP inspector would review during a control. The result is a risk map per contractor and a ready-to-use implementation plan.

Book a free consultation

FAQ

Does this only apply to new contracts signed after July 8, 2026? No. The law explicitly covers contracts still running on the day it entered into force, regardless of the signing date.

What happens to my residence card if my contract gets reclassified? A residence card based on a JDG loses its legal basis if the sole proprietorship effectively stops functioning as an independent activity. Every case is individual and depends on the card type and how much time remains before it expires. This is worth checking with a lawyer before, not after, a PIP decision.

Can I request the reclassification myself? The law provides that the inspector takes the parties’ will into account when issuing a decision, as long as it doesn’t contradict the law. But that doesn’t mean automatic recognition on request, PIP still verifies the actual working conditions.

My employer says the law “doesn’t apply to us” because we’re registered abroad. Is that true? The company’s place of registration doesn’t exempt it from Polish labor law if the work is actually performed in Poland. The expanded Art. 13 of the PIP Act explicitly allows inspecting businesses for which work was performed within the year before the inspection, regardless of where the company is registered.

Will I lose the money I already paid to ZUS as a sole proprietor? No. The new Art. 38b of the ZUS Act credits contributions already paid against future arrears under the employment contract. The employer only pays the difference.

Does a second/repeat B2B-misclassification violation automatically mean a 90,000 zł fine? No, that is a common misreading of the fine table. The 90,000 zł ceiling (Art. 281 § 2 LC) applies only when the harmed worker is a registered maintenance (alimony) debtor in the Krajowy Rejestr Zadłużonych. An ordinary repeat offense is still sentenced within 2,000-60,000 zł.

How much time do I have to prepare? Until July 8, 2027, a window for a voluntary switch without a fine for the misclassification itself remains open. It does not, however, cover ZUS and tax arrears, so the sooner you check your situation, the less potential debt accumulates.

Legal basis and sources

Author: Walery Kusznirski, labor law and PIP inspection expert at MojaFirma.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Every situation depends on the specific contract and individual circumstances. If something about your own situation isn’t quite clear, feel free to book a free consultation with our team.