Company car in Poland: leasing, loan or purchase — VAT and tax-deductible costs in 2026

In short. VAT payers deduct 50% of VAT on a company car, or 100% with business-only use. With mixed use, 75% of running costs are tax-deductible. From 2026 the car’s price counts as a cost up to PLN 100,000, 150,000 or 225,000, depending on CO₂ emissions. The limit caps lease instalments, or depreciation after a purchase or loan.

This article is based on the texts of the PIT, CIT and VAT acts, explanations from the Ministry of Finance and the biznes.gov.pl portal, with data as of 1 October 2026. With half of the VAT deducted, the PLN 100,000 limit means a car costing no more than PLN 89,686 net, and anything above that counts as a cost only in part. Since 1 January 2026 the new limit has also applied to operating lease and rental contracts signed earlier.

We are not a leasing company and we do not sell cars. Below is the accountant’s view: which of your car payments reduce your tax and which stay at your own expense.

Five ways to get a company car

You can buy the car with your own money, take out a loan, sign a leasing operacyjny (operating lease) or a leasing finansowy (finance lease), or rent it long term. The car price limit applies in all five cases. What differs is who owns the car, when the money goes out and when the VAT comes back.

An operating lease is not a rental without a right to buy. According to biznes.gov.pl, once the contract ends you can buy the car at the price written into the contract, either for the business or as your private property.

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An operating lease for a car is signed for at least two years. Najem długoterminowy (long-term rental) is taxed in much the same way as an operating lease. If the rent includes servicing or tyres, that part is treated under the rule for running costs.

VAT: 50% or 100%

By default, 50% of the VAT is deductible on a passenger car of up to 3.5 tonnes. This applies to the purchase, lease instalments, fuel, repairs and servicing. A 100% deduction is possible when the car is used only for business and this is backed by documents. Either way, you need a VAT invoice from the seller to deduct anything. If you buy from a private individual, there is nothing to deduct.

The deadline is where people trip up most often. An entrepreneur takes the car, deducts all the VAT on the initial payment and remembers the VAT-26 form two months later. The tax office, however, treats the car as “business only” from the first day of the month in which the form was filed, and not earlier.

A 100% deduction requires three things:

1. Form VAT-26. It is filed with the urząd skarbowy (tax office) by the 25th day of the month following the month of the first expense on the car, and no later than the JPK file for that month is sent. An advance paid to the seller or the leasing company already counts as the first expense. Filing is free, and the tax office does not issue a decision.
2. Ewidencja przebiegu pojazdu (mileage log), known in everyday speech as kilometrówka. It records the registration number and the odometer reading at the start and end of each period and, for every trip, the date, purpose, route, kilometres and the driver’s name.
3. Regulamin (internal car-use policy), which rules out private trips.

The condition is strict. The policy and the log must rule out any private trip at all, and for a passenger car driven by the JDG owner personally that is hard to achieve. That is why the 50% deduction remains the standard option. The income tax act takes the same approach: a car without a mileage log is treated as also used for private purposes.

Important. If the way the car is used changes, or the car is sold, VAT-26 must be updated by the end of the month in which that happened. For information that is missing or incorrect, biznes.gov.pl mentions a fine of up to 720 daily rates.

A mileage log is not needed for vehicles that by design are not suitable for private trips. Examples are vans with one row of seats and a partition, provided this is noted in the registration certificate after an additional technical inspection. Cars intended only for resale or for renting out, where that is the company’s line of business, also do without a log.

The half of the VAT you could not deduct is not lost entirely. It increases your income tax cost under the same rules as the purchase itself. You can also change the way the car is used after buying it. If you deducted 50% and, within 60 months, sold the car or switched it to business-only use, you can adjust the VAT in your favour. For cars cheaper than PLN 15,000 the adjustment period is 12 months. If you deducted 100% and started using the car privately, the adjustment is mandatory. How the tax itself works is covered in our guide to VAT in Poland.

Running costs: 75%, 20% or 100%

Fuel, servicing, tyres, car washes, repairs, parking and road tolls are 75% deductible if the car is owned by the business or leased and is also driven privately. If the entrepreneur uses a private car that is not entered in the fixed assets, 20% is deductible. The full 100% is possible only when the car is used solely for business.

The percentages are applied to the net amount plus the VAT that was not deducted. The Ministry of Finance gives this example. Fuel costs PLN 1,000 plus PLN 230 VAT, and the entrepreneur deducts half of the tax, PLN 115. The cost is 75% of PLN 1,115, that is PLN 836.25.

To deduct 100% of the costs you need the same mileage log as for VAT. At the 75% and 20% rates there is no need to keep a separate log for income tax. The 20% option exists only in the PIT act, so it is available to a JDG and not to a sp. z o.o.

Under ryczałt od przychodów ewidencjonowanych (lump-sum tax on revenue), costs do not reduce the tax at all, and all that is left of a “company car” is the VAT deduction. The forms of taxation are compared in our article on taxes for sole proprietors.

The car price limit from 2026

Since 1 January 2026 the threshold up to which the price of a passenger car counts as a cost has depended on CO₂ emissions. For electric and hydrogen cars it is PLN 225,000, and for cars emitting less than 50 g per kilometre it is PLN 150,000. For cars emitting 50 g per kilometre or more the threshold is PLN 100,000.

The CO₂ figure is taken from CEPiK, the central vehicle register. For cars registered under the new rules it is usually shown in the registration certificate, in field V.7. If the register has no figure, or it differs from the document, clear this up with the wydział komunikacji (vehicle registration department) before you buy, because the limit depends on it. For plug-in hybrids, according to the Ministry of Finance, the weighted average value from the car’s type approval is used.

The limit works as a proportion. The car’s value for this calculation is the net price plus the VAT that cannot be deducted. The limit is divided by that value, and the result is the share in which depreciation, or the “capital” part of a lease instalment, counts as a cost. If the value is below the limit, everything counts.

What about cars taken before 2026. If the car was entered in the ewidencja środków trwałych (fixed asset register) by 31 December 2025, it is depreciated under the previous rules, and for a combustion-engine car that means a limit of PLN 150,000. There is no such rule for operating leases and rentals, because the car is not in your fixed asset register. If, under a finance lease, you entered the car in the register yourself by 31 December 2025, the previous limit applies. In its reply of 17 September 2025 to a parliamentary question, the Ministry of Finance wrote that from 1 January 2026 the new limits, including PLN 100,000, also apply to operating lease and rental contracts signed earlier. The ministry had no plans to change this.

Entrepreneurs challenged this approach in court. The provincial administrative courts in Białystok on 11 March 2026 and in Poznań on 22 April 2026 dismissed the companies’ complaints and sided with the tax authorities. As of 1 October 2026 both rulings are marked in the court database as not yet final, so the dispute is not over. Until the tax authorities change their position, it is wise to plan costs under old operating lease and rental contracts on the basis of the new limit.

Important. Instalments under an operating lease signed in 2024 or 2025 have been calculated under the new limit since January 2026. For a combustion-engine car costing more than PLN 89,686 net, this means a smaller part of each instalment counts as a cost than before.

Insurance has its own threshold. AC and GAP premiums count as a cost in the proportion of PLN 150,000 to the car’s value adopted for insurance, and the new CO₂ scale did not change this threshold. The price limit does not apply to OC and NNW.

Purchase, loan and leasing: how the car becomes a cost

A purchased car costing more than PLN 10,000 becomes a fixed asset and is written off through depreciation at 20% a year, that is over five years. In a lease, the payments themselves are the cost. The limit from the previous section applies in both cases, so over the whole period the result for the price of the car itself is almost the same.

Purchase. For a used car you can set an individual rate and write it off over at least 30 months. A car counts as used if another owner used it for at least six months before the purchase. One-off depreciation is not available for passenger cars. The initial value includes the price and the expenses incurred before the car is put into use, for example registration.

Loan. The car belongs to you and is depreciated in the same way as a car bought with your own funds. In addition, the loan interest counts as a cost, while the principal does not.

Operating lease. The leasing company depreciates the car, and your costs are the opłata wstępna and the instalments. The part of the instalment that repays the value of the car is capped by the limit, and the interest part counts in full. VAT is paid and deducted on each instalment.

Finance lease. You enter the car in your fixed assets and charge depreciation yourself within the limit, and the interest part of the instalments also counts as a cost. VAT on the total of all instalments is paid at once, when you receive the car, so you need more cash at the start.

Buyout and sale. With a buyout for the business, VAT is deducted on the buyout invoice, and a buyout price of up to PLN 10,000 can be expensed at once. With a buyout as private property, VAT is not deducted. If you sell such a car within 6 years, the sale is subject to income tax as a sale made in the course of business. The period runs from the first day of the month following the month of the buyout. Income is calculated on the price at which the car is sold, and the buyout price does not matter. The biznes.gov.pl portal calls this price the market value. Before 2022 the period was six months. Since 1 January 2025 składka zdrowotna (health insurance contribution) has not been charged on such a sale.

Worked example: a PLN 120,000 car on lease, on loan and bought outright

Take a combustion-engine car at PLN 120,000 net, which is PLN 147,600 with 23% VAT. The company is a VAT payer, use is mixed, and the deduction is 50%. The value for the limit is PLN 133,800, and 74.74% of the “car price” counts as a cost. Over the whole period the lease gives PLN 120,408 in costs, the loan PLN 118,000 and the purchase PLN 100,000.

The financing terms here are assumptions made for the example, not a market offer. The lease runs for 48 months with a 10% initial payment and a 1% buyout for the business, and the loan runs for 48 months with a 10% own contribution. The cost of financing is the same in both cases, PLN 18,000 over the whole period. Actual rates at leasing companies and banks will be different.

Amounts are in PLN. In a lease, VAT is also charged on the interest part of the instalment, so the non-deducted half of that VAT counts as a cost too. A loan carries no VAT on interest. Hence PLN 20,070 against PLN 18,000 for the same cost of financing. The buyout is counted separately from the lease payments, at its own price. Under a different interpretation, the total “car price” in costs will not exceed the limit.

The 19% rate is podatek liniowy (flat tax) for a JDG. The 9% rate is the small-taxpayer CIT for a sp. z o.o. It applies where revenue is up to EUR 2 million and the small-taxpayer conditions are met, or to a new company in its first year, as explained in our article on CIT in Poland. A shareholder pays a further 19% on dividends. On the tax scale of 12% and 32%, the tax goes down by the costs multiplied by your rate. The table shows only the income tax saving. For a JDG on the tax scale or the flat tax, costs also reduce the base for the health insurance contribution (składka zdrowotna). Fuel and servicing costs are not in the table, because they are the same for every option.

The same car, but electric. The PLN 225,000 limit is higher than the PLN 133,800 value, so everything counts as a cost. The lease gives PLN 153,870 in costs, the loan PLN 151,800 and the purchase PLN 133,800. At a 19% rate the tax goes down by PLN 29,235, 28,842 and 25,422. The result for the purchase and the loan is the same for a combustion-engine car that was entered in the fixed assets by the end of 2025.

The calculation shows three things. For a combustion-engine car at PLN 120,000 net, about a quarter of the value stays outside costs whichever route you take. The difference in costs between the lease and the loan is PLN 2,408 over the whole period. Of that difference, PLN 2,070 is non-deducted VAT on the interest part. It does count as a cost, but it is your money, so in practice a lease costs slightly more than a loan when the cost of financing is the same. The choice is therefore driven by cash flow, the way VAT comes back and your form of taxation.

The calculation is for reference only, and it is worth checking your own case with an accountant before signing the contract. If you need the figures redone for your rate and your car, a Uniconsulting Group accountant will do it with your numbers.

A car in a JDG and in a sp. z o.o.

In a JDG the entrepreneur and the business are one person, so private trips in the company car are not taxed separately. The law accounts for them through the 75% and 50% restrictions. In a sp. z o.o. the car belongs to the company, and private use by an employee becomes that employee’s income.

JDG. You can enter the car in the fixed assets, or keep it private and deduct 20% of the running costs. Selling a business car gives rise to business income. The same rule applies for 6 years after the car has been withdrawn from the business into private property.

Sp. z o.o. If an employee uses a company car for private purposes, a fixed amount is added to their income. It is PLN 250 a month for cars with an engine of up to 60 kW, for electric cars and for hydrogen cars, and PLN 400 a month for all others. For an incomplete month, 1/30 of the amount is taken for each day.

The law sets these amounts for employees only. How to value private use of the car by a management board member who has no employment contract is not stated in the text of the law. Agree the approach with an accountant before the car is handed over. For the company itself, a car that an employee or a board member also drives privately counts as mixed use, so the same 75% of costs and 50% of VAT apply.

How a sp. z o.o. differs from a JDG in general is covered in our guide to the Polish sp. z o.o.

Leasing for a new company and a foreigner, insurance

The law restricts leasing neither by how long the company has been operating nor by citizenship, and any natural or legal person can be a lessee. The decision is made by the leasing company under its own client assessment rules. Nobody can promise approval in advance.

Which documents and what initial payment are needed is set by each leasing company under its own rules, and for a new company or a foreigner they may be stricter. Ask the company for the list and the terms before you pay an advance to the seller.

Since 13 July 2025 a lease contract can be concluded in document form, for example by exchanging scans or by email. A handwritten or electronic signature is not required for this.

Insurance. OC (compulsory third-party liability insurance) is needed for every registered car, and a gap in cover is fined. AC and GAP are voluntary by law, but the lease contract may require them. As a cost, AC and GAP premiums are capped by the threshold of PLN 150,000 of the car’s value, and this threshold does not apply to OC.

FAQ

Need help?

We are not a leasing company and we do not sell cars. Our part is the accounting. As part of our accounting support, a Uniconsulting Group accountant will calculate which option works out better under your form of taxation. The accountant will file VAT-26, put the car on the books and keep track of its costs. You always get an accountant who speaks English.

This material is for information only and does not replace advice from an accountant, a tax adviser or a financial intermediary. It covers income tax, VAT, leasing, loans and insurance, and reflects data as of 1 October 2026. Limits and rates change, so check biznes.gov.pl and podatki.gov.pl before a deal.