Government This week he presented and adopted a bill that reduces health insurance premiums for entrepreneurs. The reform is to take place in two stages. Firstly, from 2025 the minimum health insurance contribution will still be 9%. However, this amount will not be calculated from 100%, but up to 75%. minimum wage. This will reduce the minimum contribution next year from PLN 419.94 to PLN 314.96. – Those with the lowest incomes benefit. I believe that this change is not controversial – says Next.Gazeta.pl, tax advisor and partner at Grant Thornton Polska, Małgorzata Samborska. The expert no longer has such a clear opinion on changes regarding the inclusion of fixed assets, and she assesses the reform planned for 2026 as simply bad.
It's simply a Christmas gift for entrepreneurs. The Ministry estimates that for 94 percent of them, this change will be beneficial. There are very few people who may lose and these are entrepreneurs who settle lump sums on recorded revenues with revenues above PLN 50,000. PLN per month, and who can change the form of taxation to another one anyway
– says Samborska. What solutions has the government prepared?
Health premium for entrepreneurs down. About what will change
Let's start with the second, next to the reduction in the minimum contribution, important change for 2025. According to the proposed regulations, income and costs from the sale of fixed assets will not constitute the basis for calculating the contribution. – This change does not impose any conditions and I am afraid that it may be a gateway to various types of optimization aimed at reducing the basis for calculating health insurance contributions. Especially since depreciation write-offs will continue to reduce the basis for the premium, and income from the sale of fixed assets will not increase it – says Samborska.
To illustrate the problem, she gave the extreme case of a pinball machine that she buys apartment and before selling it, enters it in the register of fixed assets with the intention of renting it for a year. However, if the flipper changed its intentions and sells the premises before this time for, say, PLN 1.5 million, then thanks to the property being recorded in fixed assets, the income it will receive from this transaction after the reform will affect the amount of the health insurance premium. So, even though the flipper earned a huge income, he is not obliged to pay a proportionate contribution and may pay even a lower rate than a person working at a cash register who earns PLN 60,000 a year. zloty.
The second problem with the health insurance premium concerns changes planned for 2026. These are already quite complicated. Above all from 2026, entrepreneurs are to pay only a flat rate of the minimum health insurance contribution. Over the next two years, these amounts will amount to approx 300-400 PLN. Only those entrepreneurs who exceed the thresholds established in the Act will pay more,
Therefore people settling the flat tax and tax scale will pay:
- A flat-rate health insurance contribution of 9%. from 75 percent minimum wage.
- And only if the income exceeds 1.5 times the average salary in the economy, the entrepreneur will pay an additional 4.9 percent. from the surplus above this threshold.
Flat-rate riders they have to pay:
- A flat-rate health insurance contribution of 9%. from 75 percent minimum wage.
- And only if they achieve income above 3 times the average salary, they will pay 3.5%. from a surplus above 3.5%. from this threshold.
People on the tax card they will simply pay about PLN 300-400, i.e. a flat-rate health insurance contribution of 9%. from 75 percent remuneration minimal. There are no additional contributions or thresholds.
For comparison employees always pay 9%. from your gross salary less social security contributions. However, if an entrepreneur does not exceed the appropriate threshold of 1.5 or 3 times the average salary, then regardless of how much he or she earned, he or she will only pay the minimum health insurance contribution.
Samborska prepared calculations for Grant Thornton on who will gain and who will lose from such a change. The estimates assumed that salary the minimum in 2026 will be the same as today, i.e. 4.3 thousand. zloty. In this case, the minimum health insurance contribution is PLN 286.34 (although we already know that in 2025 it will be PLN 314).
Those who benefit from the tax scale are expected to gain the most. Instead of 9 percent like today, they will pay only 4.9 percent. Entrepreneur with an income of PLN 20,000 Therefore, he will only pay PLN 678 in health insurance contributions per month. This is as much as PLN 1,121 less than under the current rules. With earnings of PLN 50,000 PLN per month, the contribution drops from PLN 4.5 thousand to PLN 2.1 thousand. zloty.
Entrepreneurs on a flat tax rate of 19%. they will gain about PLN 100-200. Those who earn more than 1.5 times the average salary (over PLN 12,000) will gain approximately PLN 300. This is the result of the fact that the minimum contribution applies up to the threshold of 1.5 times the average salary. Entrepreneur with a monthly income of PLN 20,000. In such a case, the employee will pay a lower health insurance premium than an employee earning the minimum wage. Wyborcza.biz calculated, that the minimum health insurance contribution will be paid by people earning up to PLN 147,000. zloty. An employee earning the same amount as a full-time employee will pay even several dozen percent higher contributions.
Flat-rate taxpayers with lower income will also benefit from the changes, achieving benefits ranging from PLN 133 to PLN 762, depending on income. They will only lose if their income exceeds PLN 50,000. PLN per month.
Małgorzata Samborska also reminds that entrepreneurs can change the type of taxation every year, which is not the case for full-time employees.
This is a privilege enjoyed only by this group of taxpayers, which we forget about
– says the expert.
Thanks to this, the entrepreneur can choose the most advantageous option for settling accounts with the state, taking into account the planned costs. And this, as we wrote earlier, may, according to Samborska, lead to tax optimization combined with changes in the structure of health insurance premiums.
– So a lump-sum entrepreneur who would have to pay a higher health insurance contribution after the changes will decide that, despite other forms of taxation, the lump-sum payment is still the most advantageous option for him. This means that he was already very privileged before the change in question – notes the tax advisor. – The lump sum that was once introduced for traders to free them from the need to record costs, in the era of digitization and the upcoming mandatory KSeF and JPK CIT, is no longer important. It is becoming an attractive form of taxation mainly for those who have low costs – explains Samborska.
Undemocratic behavior by the government. And the National Health Fund's loss
Two more issues are problematic. The health insurance premium reform means a reduction in revenues to the National Health Fund by over PLN 6 billion annually. – This will, of course, be supplemented with budget funds, but this means that this money will reduce the budget. We cannot forget that these are connected vessels, says Samborska. The second problem concerns how to adopt changes.
It is difficult to understand the legislative process on this matter. I consider the provisions that the project is not subject to any public consultations or evaluation due to the urgency and interest of entrepreneurs, even though the change is to take effect only in 2026, to be a violation of any democratic principles. The principles that the ruling parties talked about in the coalition agreement
– points Samborska.