If your company has a Polish subsidiary or buys from Polish suppliers, this is one of the few Polish VAT rules that can penalise you for a formatting mistake on an invoice you did not even issue.
The rule itself is short. The expensive part is classification: deciding whether a specific line item belongs to a closed statutory list of goods and services, and then checking the total against a threshold that applies to the whole document rather than the individual line.
Here is how the obligation is triggered, what each side risks, and what changes on 1 January 2027 when Poland's national e-invoicing system (KSeF) starts to reach into payment instructions.
Three conditions that must hold simultaneously
The legal basis is Article 108a(1a) of the Polish VAT Act. Split payment is compulsory only when all three of the following apply:
The total amount due on the invoice exceeds PLN 15,000 gross, or its equivalent in a foreign currency. The statute says "exceeds", so an invoice for exactly PLN 15,000.00 does not trigger the rule.
The invoice documents goods or services listed in Annex 15 to the VAT Act. This is a closed list covering steel products, scrap, electronics (processors, computers, phones), fuels, coal, car parts, and construction and subcontracting services.
Both parties are taxable persons. MPP never applies to B2C sales.
Under split payment, the bank divides a single transfer: the net amount goes to the supplier's regular account, and the VAT amount goes to a ring-fenced VAT account that the supplier owns but can use only for a narrow set of tax payments.
The threshold applies to the invoice, not to the line
This is where most mistakes happen. The threshold is measured against the total amount due on the document. A single Annex 15 line is enough to pull the entire invoice into the obligation.
Invoice Line items Gross total Mandatory MPP? A Laptop PLN 8,000 net + desk PLN 10,000 net PLN 22,140 Yes (laptop is in Annex 15) B Consulting services PLN 20,000 net PLN 24,600 No (no Annex 15 item) C Steel bars PLN 12,000 net PLN 14,760 No (below threshold) D Steel bars PLN 12,200 net PLN 15,006 Yes
Invoices C and D differ by PLN 200 net. That is the entire distance between an ordinary transfer and a compulsory split payment instruction.
For foreign-currency invoices, the conversion into złoty follows the rules used to determine the VAT taxable base, which normally means the average NBP (Polish central bank) rate from the day before the tax point. An invoice for EUR 3,600 at a rate of 4.30 comes to PLN 15,480, so the obligation applies even though the threshold is not visible on the face of the document.
One distinction worth keeping straight: the MPP threshold is measured per invoice. The separate PLN 15,000 limit in Article 19 of the Entrepreneurs' Law, referenced by the income tax rules on deductible costs, is measured per transaction regardless of how many payments it produces. Splitting one delivery across several sub-threshold invoices is therefore not a safe strategy.
What the seller risks
The seller must place the Polish words mechanizm podzielonej płatności on the invoice under Article 106e(1)(18a). Omitting them lets the tax office assess an additional tax liability of 30% of the VAT attributable to the Annex 15 items shown on that invoice (Article 106e(12)).
The base matters. For invoice A above, the penalty would be 30% of the PLN 1,840 VAT on the laptop, so PLN 552, not 30% of the full PLN 4,140.
Two exclusions apply:
The buyer paid in MPP anyway, at least for the Annex 15 items. So the first response to a discovered omission is a call to the customer, not a correction document.
A natural person is already liable for the same act as a fiscal offence or petty fiscal offence. In that case the additional liability is not assessed.
Fixing the annotation itself requires a corrective invoice. The nota korygująca, a buyer-issued corrective note, was abolished on 1 February 2026, so the buyer no longer has an independent route to repair formal defects.
What the buyer risks
The buyer carries three separate exposures.
Exposure Basis Amount Relief Additional VAT liability Art. 108a(7) VAT Act 30% of VAT on Annex 15 items Supplier accounted for the full VAT on the invoice (Art. 108a(8)) Fiscal penal liability Art. 57c §1 Fiscal Penal Code fine up to 720 daily rates Voluntary disclosure, case circumstances Cost deduction denied Art. 22p(1)(3) PIT Act, Art. 15d(1)(3) CIT Act the portion paid outside MPP The invoice carried no MPP annotation
That last row surprises people. The cost deduction is denied only where the seller did include the annotation and the buyer still paid by ordinary transfer. If the annotation was missing, the deduction survives, but the 30% charge under Article 108a(7) can still apply, because the payment obligation comes from the statute rather than from the wording of the invoice.
Paying in MPP also carries an upside that is rarely mentioned: it switches off the buyer's joint and several liability for the supplier's VAT arrears on Annex 15 goods.
MPP and KSeF: what changes on 1 January 2027
KSeF does not abolish mandatory split payment. It changes how the payment is described.
In the FA(3) structured invoice schema, split payment is not a procedure marker. It is an annotation carried in field P_18A inside the Adnotacje section. Tagging a line with an MPP procedure marker therefore does not produce the effect you expect.
From 1 January 2027, Article 108g of the VAT Act starts to apply. A VAT-registered buyer paying a VAT-registered supplier for a structured invoice must quote the 35-character KSeF number of that invoice, or a collective identifier for a payment batch, in the transfer title. This obligation covers split payment instructions as well.
Article 108g(2) adds a duty to establish the supplier's VAT status on the payment date, using the register under Article 96b (the "white list"). From 2027, a payment against an MPP invoice therefore needs three things at once: the split payment instruction, the KSeF number, and a verified counterparty status.
Through the end of 2026, quoting the KSeF number remains voluntary. Use that window to confirm that your banking interface actually accepts 35 characters in the transfer title, and that your ERP can carry the number from the invoice through to the payment file.
Split payment itself rests on an EU Council derogation decision, and Poland is authorised to apply the mandatory version until 28 February 2028. KSeF will not retire it.
How Biurko handles it
In Biurko, the Annex 15 flag lives on the product record in your catalogue. It propagates automatically to every invoice line created from that product.
When an invoice is saved, the system compares the gross total against the PLN 15,000 threshold. If the total exceeds it and at least one line carries the Annex 15 flag, the MPP annotation switches on by itself and lands in the P_18A field of the XML sent to KSeF. For foreign-currency invoices the comparison runs after conversion into złoty using a rate pulled from the NBP API.
One caveat worth stating plainly: once the flag is on, the system never clears it automatically. If you edit the invoice down below the threshold, you remove the annotation by hand. That is deliberate. Silently deleting a compliance annotation from a prepared document is a worse failure mode than leaving one that is no longer required.
Biurko does not infer Annex 15 status from PKWiU or CN codes. Classification stays with you, by design: PKWiU treatment of construction works and electronic components is genuinely contested, and an engine that decides your tax obligations for you would offer false confidence rather than real protection.
Checklist before issuing the invoice
Check the gross total of the whole invoice, not the value of a single line.
Verify line items against Annex 15 by PKWiU or CN code, not by the counterparty's business activity code.
For foreign-currency invoices, convert using the rate applicable to the VAT taxable base.
Flag Annex 15 products once, in the product catalogue, instead of remembering per invoice.
Confirm the annotation reached
P_18Arather than a procedure marker field.If you spot a missing annotation after sending, ask the buyer to pay in MPP first, then issue the correction.
Check the counterparty on the white list before paying, since this becomes a statutory step in 2027.
Summary
Mandatory split payment is a short rule with expensive edges. Three conditions must hold together, the threshold is measured against the whole invoice, and the 30% charge applies only to VAT on the sensitive items. The real risk is not ignorance of the rule but manual classification across two hundred invoices a month.
Biurko flags Annex 15 products once and checks the threshold on every save, including foreign-currency invoices. Create a free Biurko account and see how an invoice with an automatic MPP annotation reaches KSeF.
FAQ
What is the split payment threshold in Poland? Split payment becomes mandatory above PLN 15,000 gross on the invoice total, provided the document contains at least one item from Annex 15 to the VAT Act and the transaction is between taxable persons. An invoice for exactly PLN 15,000 does not trigger it.
Does MPP apply to the whole invoice or only the Annex 15 lines? The annotation applies to the whole invoice. The buyer must pay at least the VAT attributable to the sensitive items through split payment, though in practice paying the full document in MPP is simpler and safer.
What if the supplier forgot the MPP annotation? The buyer still has to pay through split payment, because the obligation flows from the statute rather than the invoice wording. The cost deduction is not denied in that case, but the 30% additional VAT liability under Article 108a(7) remains possible.
What is the penalty for skipping mandatory split payment? An additional tax liability of 30% of the VAT attributable to Annex 15 goods and services shown on the invoice. A separate fiscal fine of up to 720 daily rates can be imposed under Article 57c §1 of the Fiscal Penal Code.
Does KSeF replace split payment? No. From 1 January 2027, Article 108g of the VAT Act additionally requires the KSeF number in the split payment transfer instruction. Poland holds an EU Council authorisation to apply mandatory MPP until 28 February 2028.
Sources: Articles 106e(1)(18a), 106e(12), 108a(1a), 108a(1b), 108a(7), 108a(8) and 108g of the Polish VAT Act; Article 57c §1 of the Fiscal Penal Code; Article 22p(1)(3) of the PIT Act; Article 15d(1)(3) of the CIT Act; Ministry of Finance tax explanations of 23 December 2019 on the split payment mechanism; ksef.podatki.gov.pl.