Polish Tax on Prop Firm Payouts — PIT-36, PIT-38 or Sole Proprietorship?

An FTMO payout of EUR 3,000 lands in your bank account in March and your accountant's first question is: PIT-38 with the 19 percent Belka capital gains tax, PIT-36 on the progressive scale, or maybe a registered sole proprietorship on a lump-sum regime? The Polish tax authority has no single, universal answer for prop firm income — it has issued dozens of individual rulings that point in three different directions. In this guide I break down each scenario, explain why the classification is so unsettled, and suggest when it pays to file your own ruling request before signing off on the annual return.

What is a prop firm payout from a Polish tax perspective?

On a regular Forex retail account you trade your own capital deposited with a broker — profits fall under PIT-38 as capital gains from derivatives and securities. A prop firm works very differently. You pay an entry fee for the Challenge, you complete a two-phase evaluation, and once you pass, you receive a funded account that formally belongs to the firm. You trade their capital and receive compensation, most often through a profit split of 70/30, 80/20 or 90/10. That distinction is the very first thing any Polish tax advisor will emphasise.

The money arriving every month is not a gain on your own brokerage account, because formally you do not have one. It is compensation paid by a foreign entity — typically from the Czech Republic (FTMO s.r.o.), the United Kingdom, Cyprus, the UAE or the United States — for providing a trading service on their capital. From the perspective of the Polish PIT Act this opens a classic dilemma: should it be treated as „other sources" under article 10(1)(9), as business activity under article 10(1)(3), or as capital gains under article 10(1)(7)? Each path routes the money onto a different return — PIT-37, PIT-36, PIT-36L or PIT-38 — and produces a different tax bill.

Three tax pathways the Polish authority actually considers

Over the past few years the Director of the National Tax Information has issued dozens of individual rulings concerning payouts from FTMO, The5%ers, Topstep and FundedNext. Some classify the income as „other sources", others as personally performed activity, and a third group — when the taxpayer runs a registered business — as ordinary business income. The lack of a unified line was highlighted in 2024 by tax advisor Tomasz Krywan, who notes that an individual ruling costs only PLN 40 and binds the tax office solely toward the applicant.

„In the case of income from cooperation with prop trading firms there is no uniform practice of the tax authorities — classification depends on the specific contract and should be confirmed by an individual ruling." — Tomasz Krywan, tax advisor no. 11268, *PIT Commentary*, Wolters Kluwer, 2024

The first and most common pathway is „other sources". The payout enters PIT-36, field 5, and is taxed on the progressive scale — 12 percent up to PLN 120,000 and 32 percent above. This works well for traders with modest profit splits and no other scale-taxed income. The second pathway is business activity (the Polish JDG sole proprietorship), which makes sense when trading is regular, you have proper infrastructure, and you want to deduct costs such as TradingView, Challenge fees, hardware or office rent. You choose either a flat 19 percent tax (PIT-36L) or the lump-sum regime for services. The third pathway is PIT-38 and the 19 percent Belka tax. This shows up rarely, mostly when a ruling treats the payout as a quasi-capital reward for being a „successful trader". Looking at the 2023 and 2024 rulings, PIT-38 is by far the least common classification.

How do you convert EUR or USD payouts into Polish zloty?

Regardless of which pathway your advisor selects, every payout must be converted into Polish zloty using the average National Bank of Poland (NBP) exchange rate from the last working day before the income was received. If the prop firm is based abroad, it is also worth understanding how CRS and FATCA work — the automatic cross-border exchange of financial information — because the tax authority may already see those payouts regardless of whether you have filed a declaration. The „date of receipt" under „other sources" and business activity is the day the money actually hits your bank account — Poland uses cash accounting here. NBP publishes table A of average rates each business day by noon and you find archived tables on nbp.pl. The Friday rate applies to a Monday deposit; the rate before a public holiday rolls forward analogously.

The second nuance, easy to miss, is foreign exchange differences. If FTMO sends EUR 3,000 and it sits on your euro account for several weeks before you convert it into zloty at a different rate, the tax office may expect you to recognise an exchange difference. For business activity that is a duty — for „other sources" usually not, because you keep no books. In practice most retail traders simply ensure payouts go straight into a zloty account, which eliminates the whole exchange-difference problem. The mechanics of using NBP rates are covered in our broader guide to Polish forex taxes.

A hypothetical example — FTMO trader with a EUR 3,000 payout

Krzysztof passed the Challenge in February 2026 and received his first payout of EUR 3,000 on 14 March. The NBP average rate from 13 March is PLN 4.30 per euro, so the taxable amount is PLN 12,900. Krzysztof has no registered business, he works full-time on a salary of PLN 8,000 gross per month, and this is his only extra payment of the year. His tax advisor classifies the receipt as „other sources" — the amount enters PIT-36, gets added to his employment income, and is taxed on the progressive scale. With combined income below the PLN 120,000 threshold his marginal rate is 12 percent, which gives roughly PLN 1,548 of additional tax in the annual return.

Alternative variant: if the same payout fell into the PIT-38 scenario (a capital-gains classification), Krzysztof would pay the 19 percent Belka tax on PLN 12,900, that is PLN 2,451. The gap between pathways on a single payout is PLN 903 — with 12 such payouts a year and steady profit splits, it grows into thousands of zloty annually. That is exactly why the classification is not cosmetic and why an individual ruling is worth filing before you sign off on your first annual return. The example is hypothetical and does not constitute tax advice.

What did the MyForexFunds collapse teach us?

In September 2023 the United States Commodity Futures Trading Commission filed a lawsuit against MyForexFunds, one of the largest prop firms in the world, and the Canadian Autorité des marchés financiers froze the company's assets — Reuters covered the whole affair in detail. Thousands of traders worldwide, including Polish taxpayers, lost access to their accounts and pending payouts. A real tax problem appeared: how do you report a payout you never received but which had already been recorded on a statement? Under Polish cash accounting rules — no inflow, no income, no tax, because what matters is the actual day money arrives on the account. Most rulings from the National Tax Information stick to that line.

There are two lessons from MyForexFunds. First, prop firms are commercial entities and can collapse overnight — your tax strategy needs to assume that. Second, document everything carefully: payout statements, transfer confirmations, correspondence with the firm. When you have to explain to the tax office why you booked an entry one way and not another, that paper trail is invaluable. Practical guidance on B2B cooperation with prop firms appears across the taxes and records section on ForexMechanics.

When should you file an individual ruling request?

You submit the application using form ORD-IN, available on the podatki.gov.pl portal, or on paper to the National Tax Information office in Bielsko-Biała. The fee is PLN 40 per question. In the application you describe in detail how you cooperate with the prop firm (which country, whether you sign a B2B or lump-sum contract, how payouts are calculated, whether the firm withholds any source tax), you propose a classification, and you ask whether the authority agrees. The Director of the National Tax Information has three months to respond. You can search existing rulings through the Eureka database on eureka.mf.gov.pl — use phrases like „prop trading", „FTMO" or „funded trader".

Before you send the request, take a look at our related coverage. The mechanics of the profit-split model are covered in the prop firm selection guide. If you are weighing sole proprietorship against an LLC, see our comparison piece on JDG vs LLC. The full mechanics of an annual return for a regular brokerage account are explained in the article on PIT-38 for forex, with the underlying logic of the Belka tax in a separate guide.

What to do tomorrow before you sign off on the annual return

1. Pull out your prop firm contract and read the payments chapter carefully — check whether the firm calls the payout a profit split, salary, consulting fee or challenge prize. Take a screenshot and copy the wording into a file, because prop firms change their terms regularly and you will need the version that applied on the day each payout landed.
2. List every payout from 2025 and 2026 in a spreadsheet — columns: date received, amount in the original currency, NBP rate from the previous working day, amount in zloty, source (prop firm). Without it neither your accountant nor the tax inspector can start working. Download the historical table A from the NBP archive so the conversions are bulletproof.
3. Book a consultation with a tax advisor experienced in prop trading — it costs PLN 300–600, saves you several thousand zloty a year, and protects you from late-payment interest. The advisor will help decide whether „other sources", a registered business or PIT-38 fits your situation best.
4. File an ORD-IN application for an individual ruling — PLN 40 fee, three months of waiting, binding for your specific factual circumstances. If your annual payouts exceed PLN 30,000 the step pays for itself quickly. Leave the wording to your advisor, because the Director of the National Tax Information answers only what you actually ask, and a poorly framed question yields a useless reply.
5. Review alternative legal forms for the future — if you expect to break PLN 150,000 of profit split per year, compare the cost of a sole proprietorship on the flat 19 percent rate with a limited liability company (CIT at 9 percent plus dividend). For most traders the LLC starts to pay off above roughly PLN 200,000–250,000 of annual income, but everything depends on the cost ratio and how much money you actually draw out of the company.