The 50-percent tax-deductible cost scheme, once reserved for IT and creative sectors, is gaining traction as companies across various industries adopt it to increase net wages without raising total payroll budgets.
Attracting Talent Without Increasing Company Costs
From an employee’s perspective, 50-percent tax-deductible costs (KUP) mean higher net pay while the gross salary remains unchanged. Consequently, candidates are increasingly inquiring about this tax preference during recruitment, and employers are utilizing it as a competitive advantage to secure new hires.
Łukasz Boszko, tax advisor and manager at Grant Thornton, notes a clear upward trend in the use of these “author’s” costs. It serves as an effective tool for both tax optimization and HR policy, allowing firms to boost their compensation packages without additional spending.
Limits and Formal Requirements
In 2026, the maximum deduction remains tied to the first tax bracket threshold at 120,000 PLN. Despite rising awareness, few taxpayers—only a few thousand out of over 285,000 eligible—utilize this limit in full due to strict formal requirements.
To qualify, the author’s fee for the transfer of copyrights must be clearly separated from the base salary within the employment contract. Furthermore, the employee must legally own the created work before transferring it to the employer; automatic acquisition of rights by the employer precludes the use of this tax benefit.
Applicable Sectors and Compliance
This preference applies strictly to creators generating income from copyright use or transfer. While IT and R&D are the most common fields, the list also includes architecture, literature, music, visual arts, audiovisual production, journalism, and scientific-didactic activities.
Employers have flexibility in choosing a payment model, such as hourly accounting or fixed monthly amounts, but they must be cautious. Internal regulations must be precise to withstand scrutiny from tax authorities, especially regarding absences or periods when no creative output is generated.
Legal Precedents and Documentation
A recent ruling by the Supreme Administrative Court (NSA) on October 23, 2025 (II FSK 766/25), clarified that 50-percent costs cannot be applied retroactively. If an author’s fee was not defined in the original contract, retroactive annexes cannot be used to reclaim taxes.
Security relies on robust documentation. Taxpayers must prove that a specific work was created, confirm authorship, and demonstrate that the rights were successfully transferred. This necessitates consistent tracking and archiving of creative output.
Financial Impact and Strategic Benefits
The financial benefits are tangible, with annual savings reaching nearly 2,000 PLN on a 90,000 PLN income and over 3,800 PLN on a 120,000 PLN income. However, the minimum wage—4,806 PLN in 2026—must be excluded from the author’s fee and cannot be subject to the preference.
Finally, these tax costs can be combined with the R&D relief, which allows a 200-percent deduction for employee remuneration costs in 2026. This synergy creates additional tax advantages for the employer, making the mechanism a highly efficient component of modern corporate compensation strategies.
