Hiring Employees in Poland Without a Local Entity: ZUS, Payroll, Tax & Employment Rules for U.S. Companies

Updated: March 23, 2026

Are you wondering what U.S.-to-Poland hiring looks like when you want to employ someone in Poland without opening a local office? In this article, we explain the issue from two perspectives at once: a Polish employee who wants to legally work from Poland for a U.S. company, and a U.S. HR / legal / payroll team that needs to understand how this works on the Polish side. The examples below are anonymized and simplified — they combine elements of several recurring situations we encounter at Biuro Rachunkowe Precyzja. That makes this article practical, while avoiding disclosure of any specific client’s data.

There are certain phone calls that come into our office surprisingly often.

The first one usually comes from Poland. “I got an offer from a California company. They want to hire me under an employment contract, but without setting up a company in Poland. Is that even legal?”

The second call comes a few hours later from the U.S. “We hire in many countries, but Poland is new for us. Our instinct is: the employer runs payroll, withholds taxes, files everything. Why are we hearing that the employee can take over ZUS contribution administration?”

And that is exactly where the most interesting part of the whole story begins. From the Polish employee’s perspective, this model sounds a little unsettling: “Am I going to be left alone with the whole ZUS burden?” From the U.S. HR perspective, it sounds almost illogical: “How can the employee be the payer and still remain an employee?”

In practice, this can be organized properly. You just have to separate three things that are often thrown into one bucket in everyday conversations:

• employment law — meaning the rules under which the employee is hired and what rights they have,
• ZUS — meaning who technically registers and settles social security contributions and how,
• PIT — meaning who pays income tax advances and what the annual tax return looks like.

If these three areas are structured correctly from the start, a U.S. company can legally hire a person living and working in Poland without opening a local branch, and the employee can still have a regular employment contract, Polish social security coverage, and predictable settlements. This is exactly the logic behind the solution we describe more broadly on our website as the transfer of ZUS payer obligations to the employee and as the model of hiring in Poland without opening a branch.

The shortest answer

If you only want the bottom line, here it is:

• Yes — a U.S. company can hire a person living and working in Poland under a model in which the employee takes over the technical duties of the ZUS contribution payer.
• No — this is not exactly the same legal mechanism that applies to companies from the EU. For the EU, we have Regulations 883/2004 and 987/2009; for the U.S., the starting point is the Poland–U.S. Social Security Agreement and the Polish ZUS procedure.
• No — transferring payer obligations does not turn the employee into a contractor. It can still be a standard employment contract.
• Yes — you must take care of the documents, registrations, NIP, ZUS forms, and the method of paying PIT advances. Most mistakes happen at the beginning, not in the middle of the month.

Two perspectives, one issue

Perspective 1: the Polish employee

This is usually how it looks. A candidate gets a great offer: good pay, an interesting product, an international team, fully remote work. The problem appears only when the question comes up: “How do we actually sign this formally?” In the U.S., nobody thinks about ZUS, a Polish tax ID number, or filings in Warsaw. So the candidate starts looking for answers on their own and runs into conflicting information: some say “set up a business,” others say “use an EOR,” and still others say “just sign the agreement and somehow it will work out.”

At Precyzja, we usually start by calming the client down. If the work really has the characteristics of employment — performed personally, under the employer’s direction, on a set rhythm, and for pay — then it is worth calling it what it is and not pretending it is B2B simply because the employer is foreign. The Polish National Labour Inspectorate clearly describes the characteristics of an employment relationship, and an employment contract should specify, among other things, the parties, the type of work, the place of work, compensation components, working time, and the start date. In our experience, this is the first thing that gives the employee a sense of security: “This is not a workaround — this is normal employment, just in an international setup.”

Perspective 2: U.S. HR / legal / payroll

On the other side of the table is usually someone who operates very efficiently in the United States. They know how onboarding, payroll, withholdings, year-end reporting, and employer obligations work. And that is exactly why Poland can feel confusing to them. In the U.S., the default instinct is simple: the employer withholds and remits payroll taxes. The IRS says very clearly that employers must withhold and report employment taxes, including federal income tax as well as Social Security and Medicare taxes. So to a U.S. payroll team, the model in which “the employee takes over ZUS payer obligations” sounds like an exception to common sense.

What we usually explain is this: in Poland, we are not talking about changing the nature of the employment relationship. No “fake contractor setup” is being created. What changes is only who technically performs the payer’s duties toward ZUS. That is a very important distinction — and that is exactly why this model has to be set up consciously, not treated like an administrative shortcut.

First things first: U.S. hiring in Poland is not the same as hiring in the EU

This is the part that causes the most confusion. When the employer is from the EU, EU regulations on the coordination of social security systems apply in the background. Regulation 883/2004 adopts, as a general rule, that a person working in a given state is subject to the legislation of that state. Regulation 987/2009, in turn, allows an employer that has no place of business in the state of the applicable legislation to agree with the employee that the employee will perform, on the employer’s behalf, the duties concerning the payment of contributions. This is important: that provision does not remove the employer’s core obligations — it only allows the technical execution to be arranged differently.

For a U.S. company, that EU mechanism is not a standalone legal basis. Here, we first look at the Poland–U.S. Social Security Agreement, which entered into force on March 1, 2009, and is intended, among other things, to prevent double social security coverage and determine which system applies to a given person. The general rule under that agreement is territorial: as a rule, what matters is the country where the work is actually performed. That is why, for a person living in Poland and genuinely working from Poland, the starting point is usually the Polish system, unless a specific exception applies, such as a temporary assignment. For detached workers, the agreement allows the employee to remain in the sending country’s system for up to 5 years, but that is a completely different situation from permanent remote work from Poland for a U.S. company.

For the Polish employee, this difference matters mainly because it answers one of the most common questions: “Can my U.S. company simply use exactly the same model as a company from Germany?” The answer is: not one-to-one. The organizational result may be similar, but the legal path is different. For U.S. HR, this means that it is not a good idea to copy European checklists without checking whether they actually fit a Poland–U.S. setup.

What does this look like in practice for Precyzja clients?

A simplified but very real-life example looks like this.

Step one: the conversation with the employee. The candidate usually asks us not about regulations, but about everyday life. “Will I get a real employment contract?” “Will I have health insurance in Poland?” “Will it later turn out that I have to pay everything back?” These are very reasonable questions. And it is a good thing they are asked before signing the contract, not after the first transfer hits the bank account.

Step two: the conversation with the U.S. company. The questions here are different. “Do we need a Polish entity?” “Can our employee sign the employment agreement directly with us?” “Who files with ZUS?” “What if we do nothing and just pay salary from the U.S.?” This is usually the stage where we organize the entire project: we determine whether the company really wants direct hire or whether an EOR or a Polish company would be a better fit. If direct hire makes sense, we map out the onboarding so there is no improvisation.

Step three: the first month of service. And this is the moment when the relief on both sides is usually the greatest. The employee sees that they have not been left alone with the authorities. HR sees that Poland is not chaos — it just needs the right local workflow. In practice, this is exactly where an accounting office makes the biggest difference, because it is not only about calculating amounts, but about guiding both sides through the process in a language they understand.

On our About Us page, we explain that since 2017 we have been helping clients with cross-border matters and that we operate fully remotely. This matters not only from a marketing perspective. For cases like these, remote capability truly matters: a client in Poznań, a CFO in Texas, and a payroll specialist in New York do not need to sit in the same room to get everything done properly.

What exactly must be done on the ZUS side?

This is where we move from “is this possible?” to “how do we do this without mistakes?” ZUS has its own procedure for this situation. And that is good news, because this is not a gray area. ZUS explicitly describes two options: registering the foreign employer as a payer, and registering the employee who has taken over the foreign employer’s payer obligations.

In practice, under the “transfer” model, we usually start with whether the employee already has a NIP. A Polish employee will usually use their own NIP. Then we prepare the full set of documents for ZUS. The online service is not available at the initial stage — ZUS indicates that this matter must be handled in person. For many U.S. companies, this is the first cultural friction point, because they are used to fully digital onboarding. In Poland, the paper-based startup path still has to be prepared very carefully.

Under this model, ZUS requires, among other things, a copy of the agreement with the foreign employer on the transfer of payer obligations, an identity document, and registration forms. In practice, the key forms are: ZUS ZFA as the registration of a payer who is an individual, ZUS ZUA or ZUS ZZA for registration for the appropriate insurance coverage, and ZUS ZAA, where the address of the foreign entity with which the employee has an agreement on taking over payer duties is provided. ZUS also indicates a 7-day deadline from the hiring of the first employee to submit the documents. Importantly, documents for this path are directed to the 1st ZUS Branch in Warsaw, Senatorska 6/8.

That sounds formal — and it is. But in the client’s everyday life, it looks much simpler: if the onboarding is well prepared, the employee signs the full set of documents once, and then the monthly service becomes a predictable process. That is exactly why, at Biuro Precyzja, we put the strongest emphasis not on “putting out fires,” but on setting up the first two weeks of cooperation properly.

What about PIT?

This is the second area that very often gets mixed up with ZUS. And it should not. From a tax perspective, the first question is not “is the company from the U.S.?” but “where is the employee tax resident, and where do they actually work?” The Polish Ministry of Finance emphasizes that if you earn income abroad, you must first determine your tax residence. A Polish tax resident generally reports their worldwide income in Poland, taking into account the relevant double tax treaty.

In practice, clients usually ask it more simply: “If the company is American, do I pay taxes in the U.S.?” And here the answer is usually: not automatically. The mere fact that the salary is paid by a U.S. company does not mean that an employee living and permanently working from Poland ceases to be subject to Polish rules. For us, as an accounting office, this usually means a separate analysis: residence, place of work, the Poland–U.S. double tax treaty, the method of salary payment, and the annual return.

The second practical issue is tax advances. If the foreign employer does not act as a Polish PIT withholding agent, it is necessary to determine in advance who pays tax advances in Poland and how. This is the moment when U.S. HR often says: “in the U.S., payroll would do it automatically.” And they are right — but in this Polish setup, it has to be arranged consciously. For the employee, the most important thing is not to wake up after a year with a good salary and a badly settled tax position.

In practice, foreign-source employment income is usually reported on the PIT-36 return, and in the Twój e-PIT service, foreign income is also added there. The Polish Ministry of Finance also reminds taxpayers that income in foreign currencies is translated into PLN using the average NBP exchange rate from the last business day preceding the date the income was received. For the client, this is another detail that seems minor — right up until the first audit or correction.

The part that reassures employees the most: you still have employment rights

This is the part that is always worth stating clearly and without jargon. If you are a Polish employee and you are genuinely working from Poland under an employment contract, the mere “transfer of ZUS obligations to the employee” does not automatically take away your protection under labor law. We are still talking about an employment relationship, not disguised self-employment.

The Polish National Labour Inspectorate reminds employers that an employment relationship means work performed for the employer and under the employer’s direction, at a place and time designated by the employer, and for remuneration. If such a relationship exists, it is not worth pretending that we are dealing with something else merely because the company is foreign. That is usually a bad idea for both the employee and the employer.

Then there is remote work. For many U.S. companies, “remote from Poland” sounds like a simple note in the contract. On the Polish side, the issue is more concrete. The Polish Ministry of Family and Labour reminds employers that remote work is performed in a place indicated by the employee and agreed with the employer, and that the employer has obligations relating to materials, work tools, electricity costs, and necessary telecommunications services, and — where private equipment is used — also reimbursement. In everyday life, this means that a good contract with a U.S. company should regulate not only salary and scope of duties, but also equipment, costs, and the rules of working from home.

What the step-by-step process looks like

1. We determine whether this is truly an employment contract

If the work has the characteristics of employment, there is no point in forcing it into a B2B structure simply because the U.S. company does not know Polish formalities. That is usually a false economy.

2. We verify the applicable social security system

For Poland and the U.S., we look at the social security agreement and whether we are dealing with ordinary work performed in Poland or with a specific case of posting or temporary transfer.

3. We structure the contractual documentation

The employment contract must clearly state the parties, the place of work, the remuneration, the start date, and the rules of remote work. If the employee is to perform the payer role toward ZUS, we prepare a clause or a separate agreement on taking over payer obligations.

4. We do the ZUS onboarding

We gather the NIP, identification documents, a copy of the agreement, and the registration forms for ZUS. This is the moment where precision really matters — a small error in the data can slow down the entire process.

5. We set up the monthly service

You need to know in advance when payroll data comes from the U.S., which date is used for the exchange rate, who approves the calculation, and who physically makes the ZUS payment and any PIT advance payment.

6. We close the year without improvisation

A well-structured monthly process makes the annual return not a stressful reconstruction of events, but a calm summary of the data.

When does this model make sense?

In our experience, it works best when:

• a U.S. company wants to hire one or several people in Poland,
• it wants direct employment, rather than a relationship through an intermediary,
• the employee wants a standard employment contract and Polish social security coverage,
• both sides want to avoid the cost and rigidity of a classic EOR,
• there is readiness to organize the documents and process properly from the beginning.

Sometimes, however, a different model is a better solution — for example, when the company plans to quickly expand its team in Poland, when employees will regularly work in several countries, or when the benefits structure is so complex that direct hire without a local presence stops being practical. That is why an honest analysis at the beginning is more valuable than a quick “yes, it can be done.”

What we most often tell clients at the end of the first consultation

To the Polish employee, we usually say this: this is not a model for people who want to guess their way through it. But it is a very good model for those who want a legal employment contract with a foreign company without losing Polish order in ZUS and taxes.

To U.S. HR / legal / accounting, we usually say this: don’t try to rebuild Poland from U.S. payroll logic alone. In Poland, this can be done more simply than it seems, but only if the local rules are taken seriously from the beginning, not only after the first salary payment has already gone out.

And that is probably what best describes the day-to-day work of our office. It is not just about “filling out forms.” It is about making sure that a Polish specialist can calmly accept a good offer from a U.S. company, and that the U.S. employer can implement that offer safely and sensibly.

If you want to see a more technical explanation of this model, take a look at our materials:

• How can foreign companies legally hire employees in Poland without opening a branch?
• Transfer of ZUS payer obligations – a service for foreign companies
• Do I need an A1 certificate or a tax residency certificate?
• Meet Biuro Precyzja
• Contact us

If you are sharing this article with your team in the U.S., our English pages may also be useful:

• Hire employees in Poland without a branch
• About us
• Contact in English

Official and government sources

• ZUS – registration of an entity acting as a foreign payer
• ZUS – how to register a person acting as a foreign payer
• ELI – Social Security Agreement between Poland and the United States
• SSA – U.S.-Poland Social Security Agreement text
• SSA – practical guide to the agreement with Poland
• podatki.gov.pl – income from work performed abroad
• Ministry of Finance – tax guidance on tax residence
• podatki.gov.pl – foreign income and PIT-36
• National Labour Inspectorate – employment relationship
• National Labour Inspectorate – how to hire an employee under an employment contract
• gov.pl – remote work
• EUR-Lex – Regulation 883/2004
• EUR-Lex – Regulation 987/2009
• EUR-Lex – Rome I
• IRS – understanding employment taxes
• IRS – depositing and reporting employment taxes