Taxed on money you never saw

The most common surprise of a first year driving for the apps is not the commission. It is what the tax is calculated on.

Where the problem comes from

Formally, the driver performs the transport service. The app is an intermediary: it matches passenger to driver and charges a fee for doing so.

These are two separate transactions, not one reduced amount:

1. The driver carries the passenger. The driver's revenue is everything the passenger paid.
2. The app supplies the driver with an intermediation service. The commission is the driver's cost.

The account shows only the result of the subtraction. The paperwork shows two lines.

What it means in figures

Take the trip from our other breakdown: the passenger paid 402.98 zł and 204.72 zł reached the driver.

Under the ryczałt the app's commission does not reduce the base. That is not an error or an abuse — it is how a lump sum works: a lower rate in exchange for no costs. The trouble starts when somebody picks it by looking at the rate rather than at how much of their turnover an intermediary takes.

The larger the app's share of a trip, the worse the lump sum looks. On a trip where the intermediary keeps half, the tax is calculated on twice what the driver actually received.

VAT

Taxi passenger transport in Poland has its own simplified VAT lump sum — a low rate, but no input deduction. The base is what the passenger paid. The alternative is standard settlement, deducting VAT on fuel, the rental and servicing.

Which works out better depends on how much you spend on VAT-bearing costs. A driver renting a car and buying 1,500 zł of fuel a month has a lot to deduct. A driver in their own paid-off car has considerably less.

This is a conversation with an accountant, not with a forum. Rates and thresholds change more often than articles on the internet do, and the regime chosen at the start binds for the year.

The practical rule

Set aside tax against what the passenger paid, not against the transfer from the app.

Set aside a percentage of what lands in the account and you will be short at settlement — short by exactly what the intermediary took. That is the usual reason a driver who "earned fine" all year ends it owing the tax office several thousand złoty.

What this article does not replace

Specific rates are deliberately absent. Not because they are secret, but because they change every year, and an article read after the change is worse than no article.

The mechanism above is constant: revenue is what the passenger paid. Check the current rates, and which regime is cheaper in your case, with an accountant before your first working month — after that, changing regime before the year ends is usually not possible.