Poland charges a tourist fee in 234 of its municipalities. The law its lower house passed on Friday opens that to about 1,500.
Today a town qualifies only if it has favourable climatic properties as well as landscape merit. The new text keeps landscape merit and drops the climate test, and the government's own impact assessment puts the reach at about 1,500 municipalities.
Then it changes who collects.
If you hold Polish stock you are probably collecting already. The impact assessment, in translation, on the position today: collection is "in most cases carried out by appointed collectors of those fees", and those collectors are bodies "running: hotels, holiday centres, guesthouses, sanatoria, private lodgings, letting holiday homes, campsites, tent sites".
So the job is not new. The liability is.
Today you are an appointed collector, and under the tax code you answer only for money you took and did not hand over. From 1 January 2027 you are a statutory remitter, and a remitter "is liable for tax not collected, or tax collected and not paid over", answering "with all of their assets". The one defence is that the tax went uncollected through the guest's own fault.
The register: per property, per guest, name and home address, the rate or the ground for not charging, the nights, the amount. Return filed and money paid by the 15th of the following month.
The commission: 10% reads as a sweetener and it is a floor. The government surveyed existing rates and found an average of 12.03%, a range from 3% to 25%, and a median and mode of 10%. The act voids the resolutions that set the higher rates, and a council may only go above 10%, never below. A separate limb of the same act makes the commission taxable business income.
The rate: 5 zloty is about 40% above the 3.56 zloty cap already published for 2027, not 45% above the 2026 cap of 3.46. And the spa levy cap is 6.86 zloty under both the old rules and the new. Spa towns get no rise at all.
Then the silence. Airbnb, Booking, platform, intermediary and portal appear zero times in the text as passed. I checked mechanically.
Status. It cleared the lower house 269 to 141 with 28 abstentions and is with the Senate, which has 30 days, then the President. Nothing is in the gazette. This is not law yet.
Daily Message: Poland is putting personal liability and a named guest register on every host, and nothing whatsoever on the platforms holding the bookings.
If you run Polish units, do you know whether your council pays you above 10% today, and whether it plans to vote again before January?
