Information and services website for entrepreneurs

Business address, registered office of entrepreneur, place of business

You have to make a decision about the location of your business at the stage of setting up a business, because this is one of the few information you have to provide during registration.

Depending on your choice of legal form, your decision will affect your further responsibilities:

  • in the case of registration in the National Court Register - for the nationality to the competent tax office in the field of tax settlements
  • the address indicated must appear on the invoices and bills issued and in correspondence addressed to your counterparties
  • it will also be made public in a register (CEIDG or KRS).

The place of business is the address (street name, building number, apartment number) or an unusual place (e.g. pavilion no. X in the underground passage under Y street at the height of the building no. Z, or pavilion no. X in the shopping mall Y at Z street).

The entrepreneur may have, apart from the main place of business, also additional places of business.

Note: If you set up a sole proprietor company and your business activity is associated with frequent changes in the place of its operation (customer service) or is mobile, you do not need to indicate the address of the place of business in the CEIDG registration application. The only address entered may be your address for service (it does not have to be your address of residence).

You indicate your permanent place of business if you have a shop, for example.

In the case of self-employment (CEIDG), very often the main place of business is the same as the place of residence of the entrepreneur.

Important! If you do business in your place of residence, you can designate all or part of the property for this purpose. You can also do business in a part of the property such as a room. According to the tax interpretation, expenses related to the maintenance and operation of an apartment may be classified as tax deductible costs only if the apartment, as a whole or separately, is used only for business purposes and at the same time is not used for personal purposes.

If a room is used for private purposes and only is used additionally in the conducted business activity, the expenses related to the possession of such a room are of a personal nature and cannot be included in the tax deductible costs.

Address for service changes as of 30 April 2018

The new regulations on CEIDG introduced changes concerning the address of entrepreneurs. The scope of address data entered into CEIDG is limited to the address for service and the address of your permanent place of business (if any). If your business involves frequent relocations (on-site service) or is mobile, you do not need to indicate the address of your place of business in your registration. The only address entered may be your address for service (it does not have to be your address of residence).

Change of address

Remember that in case of CEIDG it is very easy to change the place of business. It is enough to make appropriate changes in the entry in the CEIDG. The change is not subject to a fee.

What do I have to bear in mind when indicating my registered office (place of business)?

If you do business in someone else's property (e.g. a rented flat), you must have the owner's permission to conduct business. This is due to the fact that business premises are subject to higher property tax.

If you indicate as your registered office a place to which you do not have the right or the owner has not agreed to conduct business there, it may even be a reason to remove the entry from the register. The tax office may, in turn, question all the expenses incurred in connection with the unlawful use of the premises for the purposes of conducting business activity.

If you are an entrepreneur registered with CEIDG, indication of your registered office does not affect the jurisdiction of the tax office, where you pay monthly income tax advances and annual PIT. This is always the office competent for your place of residence.

Important! The place of business is the address, not the area. Therefore, it is not possible to identify as a place of business: "Poland' or 'the European Union' or 'the whole country'. The place of business should not be equated with the actual place of providing services, but with the place where the entrepreneur undertakes administrative activities, collects tax documentation, contracts with business partners and other documents. Even if the services are provided at the registered office of another company (e.g. contractor X undertakes in the contract to provide services at the registered office of the form Y), this is not the registered office of the entrepreneur/ place of business. An entrepreneur may indicate multiple addresses where he conducts business activity. An exception to providing the full address of the place of business is an unusual place of business - e.g. a position number in a trade fair hall, an underground passage, etc. 

There are several things you need to bear in mind when indicating your registered office

The registered office is not always where you actually do things.

If you provide services on the basis of a contract with another entrepreneur in place A, then almost certainly place A is not your registered office (it is the registered office of the entrepreneur with whom you conclude a contract).

Very often the formal seat (indicated in CEIDG) of the entrepreneur is a place where he does not provide any services, e.g. his apartment, his parents' apartment, virtual office.

In such a case, the seat is the place where you, as an entrepreneur, carry out organizational activities, from this place you order the necessary goods, calculate the tax, fill in tax returns or store company documents, such as contracts or invoices.

If your employees work remotely, the place where they work is not their place of business. There is also no need to notify an additional place of business.

Free provision of premises

If a member of your immediate family provides you with a property for business purposes free of charge, this does not impose additional obligations on you. Persons listed as Tax Group I and II in the Act on Inheritance and Donation Tax are considered to be immediate family members. In practice, distant cousins and the family of the stepmother and stepfather, for example, are not members of the immediate family.

If you receive the right to use the property free of charge for business purposes from an unrelated person, e.g. a colleague, tax law treats your savings as business income. You need to estimate the value of the contract - i.e. how much you would have to pay if the property had to be rented out. This amount is your income and is subject to taxation.

This is a general tax rule which stipulates that if an entrepreneur receives something free of charge, he must value it at market value and consider it as taxable income.

What address should be indicated on bills and invoices

An invoice should provide the address of the registered office of the taxpayer consistent with the submitted identification application form VAT-R. In case of natural persons this would be their residence address. However, if a natural person does not conduct business activity in the place of residence and has a different principal place of operating business activity (indicated in the identification application for tax purposes), then that address of the principal place of operating business activity should be provided on an invoice.

Place of storage of documents

Important issue connected with registration of activity in CEIDG is the indication of the place of storage of documents. The address may be different from the address of the place of business or the registered office of the accounting office.

Mandatory legal title 

Entrepeneur is obliged to have legal title to real property whose addresses are subject to registration in the Central Register and Information on Economic Activity.  This title is not subject to an application for entry in the Central Register and Information on Economic Activity but should be presented to the record authority at its request.

The legal title to a real property may be the ownership right (co-ownership) to real estate or residential premises, the right of perpetual usufruct of land with the ownership right to buildings, cooperative ownership right to premises, lease, rental or lending.  

The document confirming the possession of legal title may be a sale agreement (in the form of a notarial deed), an extract from the land and mortgage register, a land ownership act, an administrative decision or an agreement in writing: lease, rental or lending.

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