The Ministry of Family, Labour and Social Policy has informed that it has already prepared a draft amendment to the law on the social insurance system. The new regulations foresee including all civil law contracts, including contracts for specific work and mandate contracts, in the mandatory social insurance. According to the Central Statistical Office (GUS), at the end of the first quarter of 2024, nearly 2.3 million people in Poland were working under mandate and similar contracts. There is not yet a decision on when the reform will be implemented. “I estimate the time needed to implement this change at three to six months,” announces Sławomir Wasielewski, a board member responsible for the IT Department at ZUS (Polish Social Insurance Institution).
Work is ongoing on the amendment of the Act on the social insurance system and the Act on social insurance due to accidents at work and occupational diseases. The prepared draft amendment foresees covering all civil law contracts – pension, disability, sickness and accident insurance. The exception would be contracts carried out by secondary school students or students under 26 years old.
Contribution to civil law contracts is one of the commitments under the National Recovery Plan. Poland is the only country in Europe where there is no obligation to pay full ZUS contributions from all mandate contracts. The mandate contract currently goes under mandatory ZUS contributions if it is the only source of an income for a contractor. Further mandate contracts, if the value of the first contract exceeded the amount of the minimum wage, do not have to be covered.
“We do not have clear regulations on the contribution of civil law contracts, there is not yet such an integrated draft legal act that would specify how this change should be implemented in social insurance systems,” says Sławomir Wasielewski in an interview with the Newseria Biznes agency.
There is not yet a decision when the reform could come into effect. Ministry of Family, Labour, and Social Policy announcements suggest that contribution payers, policyholders, and ZUS need to adapt to the changes, hence new regulations could come into effect at the earliest at the beginning of the 2026.
Finance Minister Andrzej Domański announced in early August that a decision on the contribution of civil law contracts should be made in the coming weeks. In June 2024, Minister Agnieszka Dziemianowicz-Bąk stated that the vacatio legis should be extended for even up to six months so that entrepreneurs can adjust to the changes. ZUS also needs time to prepare for the changes.
Sławomir Wasielewski believes that this shouldn’t be a complicated change for the comprehensive IT system of the institution. “We are not talking about building a completely new system on a nationwide scale, but about introducing a minor change, which for the institution is related to a new insurance title code and a suitable scheme for being subject to this insurance. So this is a change that is basically configurable and will not be a big challenge from the IT perspective for the institution.”
New regulations for ZUS mean new insurance title codes and modifications of some forms. “Given the degree of complexity, the time where the institution would be able to implement such a change, I estimate at three to six months. The change of the insurance contributions for contracts would not be related to additional employment of the IT staff on the part of the institution,” Wasielewski assures.
According to GUS, at the end of March 2024, 2.29 million people in Poland were working on the basis of mandate contracts and related contracts, i.e. agency contracts, service contracts, activating contracts, appointment acts and contracts with supervisory board members. In 2023, ZUS received 1.2 million RUD forms (50.5 thousand more than in 2022), which reported 1.6 million contracts for specific work (81 thousand less compared to 2022). The most people executing contracts for specific work were shown in information and communication (87.6 thousand performers – 20.37 percent). In further positions were professional, scientific and technical activities (79.1 thousand performers – 18.38 percent), activities related to culture, entertainment, and recreation (57.2 thousand performers – 13.3 percent) or education (53.8 thousand performers – 12.5 percent).
“The challenges are other aspects of the introduction of contributions, mainly financial for employers,” evaluates the expert.
For companies, the new regulations mean huge costs. Confederation Lewiatan warns that this is not the right moment for solutions generating additional costs for companies, given the already rapidly increasing operating costs of entrepreneurs. Every fifth employee decided to take on additional work in 2023 to earn more due to the economic situation (results of the 49th edition of the Labour Market Monitor carried out by the Randstad Research Institute).
