Start with three words
The whole PIT-38 form rests on three ideas. Once they click, the rest of the form gets a lot easier.
| Term | What it actually means |
|---|---|
| Revenue (przychód) | Everything you received from the sale. The gross amount, before subtracting anything. |
| Deductible cost (koszt uzyskania przychodu, KUP) | What you spent to earn that revenue. Mostly the purchase price and commissions. |
| Income (dochód) | Revenue minus costs. This is what you're taxed on. |
The rate is 19%, commonly called the "Belka tax".
The practical takeaway: every złoty of cost you forget is 19 groszy of tax you didn't need to pay. That's why it's worth spending an hour gathering every fee.
The most important thing: these are two separate buckets
This is where beginners most often go wrong.
PIT-38 treats shares and other securities and cryptocurrency as two completely separate worlds. They have their own sections of the form, their own cost rules, and you must never mix them.
| Shares, ETFs, bonds, derivatives | Cryptocurrency | |
|---|---|---|
| Form section | Part C | Part E |
| Fields | 20–29 | 36–40 |
| Can a stock loss reduce crypto tax? | No | No |
If you made money on shares and lost money on crypto in the same year, you don't net them off. Each bucket is settled on its own.
Costs on shares and ETFs (Part C)
The Ministry of Finance brochure lists these explicitly. You can deduct:
- The purchase price — unit price times number of units.
- The buy commission.
- The sell commission. This is the one most people forget.
- Account opening and maintenance fees charged by your broker.
- Transfer and securities deposit fees.
- Interest and commission on a loan taken out to buy those securities — proportionally to the part of the loan actually spent acquiring them.
Items 4–6 surprise a lot of people. If your broker charges a flat monthly account fee, that is a deductible cost.
Two special cases
- Inherited securities — your cost is what the deceased paid, not zero.
- Gifted securities — the acquisition cost is 0 PLN, but the income is exempt from tax up to the amount of inheritance and gift tax that was paid.
Costs on cryptocurrency (Part E)
Here the rule is narrower, and it comes from art. 22(14) of the PIT Act. Only these count:
- documented expenses incurred directly on acquiring the virtual currency, and
- costs connected with disposing of it, including documented fees paid to crypto exchanges and bureaux.
The word "directly" is doing a lot of work and it cuts the list short. The expense has to attach to the actual buy or sell of the coin — not to the general fact that you deal in crypto.
That's why mining rigs, graphics cards and the electricity used for mining are not deductible here. Those are costs of running an operation, not costs of acquiring a specific coin.
What you can't deduct in either bucket
| Expense | Why not |
|---|---|
| Courses, training, books, webinars | Personal education, not a cost of a specific trade |
| Hardware: laptop, phone, Ledger wallet | Not a direct cost of acquisition |
| Subscriptions: TradingView, paid groups | Same reason |
| Home internet and electricity | Only relevant if you trade as a registered business |
What about network (gas) fees?
The honest answer here is: it depends, and the rules don't settle it explicitly.
A fee for simply moving coins between your own wallets is hard to defend as a cost of acquisition or disposal — you aren't buying or selling anything, just relocating your own funds. A fee paid as part of a trade on a decentralised exchange has a much stronger case.
If these fees add up to a meaningful amount for you, that's the point to ask a tax adviser rather than guess.
Currency conversion: the date that trips everyone up
If you buy or sell in dollars or euros, you convert every amount into złoty using the average NBP rate from the last business day preceding the day of the transaction.
Read that again: not the transaction day, the day before it.
If you sold on a Monday, you use Friday's rate, because Friday was the last business day before Monday. The same rule applies to costs, so your purchase and your sale will usually be converted at two different rates.
You can look up the right rate with our currency converter — enter the transaction date and it pulls the rate from the correct day for you.
A worked example, step by step
You buy 1 share for 100 USD and sell it for 150 USD. The commission is 1 USD on each trade.
NBP rates from the preceding day: 4.00 PLN at purchase, 4.20 PLN at sale.
Step 1. Revenue — the gross sale amount, without subtracting the commission:
150 USD × 4.20 = 630.00 PLN
Step 2. Costs — everything you spent, each item at its own rate:
| Item | In currency | Rate | In PLN |
|---|---|---|---|
| Share purchase price | 100 USD | 4.00 | 400.00 PLN |
| Buy commission | 1 USD | 4.00 | 4.00 PLN |
| Sell commission | 1 USD | 4.20 | 4.20 PLN |
| Total costs | 408.20 PLN |
The sell commission goes into costs — it does not reduce revenue. The result is the same number, but on the form it has to sit on the correct side.
Step 3. Income:
630.00 − 408.20 = 221.80 PLN
Step 4. Tax — mind the order. Round the tax base to whole złoty first, and only then apply 19%:
221.80 → 222 PLN (base rounded)
222 × 19% = 42.18 → 42 PLN (tax rounded)
Round down below 50 groszy, up from 50 groszy inclusive.
If you skipped both commissions you'd report 400 PLN of costs and pay tax on 230 PLN. The difference is a few złoty here — but across a hundred trades a year it becomes real money.
Where this goes on the form
It depends on whether you received a PIT-8C — the statement Polish brokerage houses send to you and to the tax office.
| Your situation | Row | Revenue | Costs |
|---|---|---|---|
| Polish broker, you got a PIT-8C | Row 1 | field 20 | field 21 |
| Foreign broker (Revolut, eToro, IBKR) — no PIT-8C | Row 2 | field 22 | field 23 |
| Cryptocurrency | Part E | field 36 | field 37 |
Two things worth knowing:
- Even with a PIT-8C, you may add costs the broker didn't report into field 21, based on your own documents.
- Foreign brokers do not issue a PIT-8C. Nobody calculates this for you and nothing appears automatically in the Twój e-PIT service. You report all of it yourself, in row 2.
Before you file
- Is the sell commission on the cost side?
- Did you include account maintenance, transfer and deposit fees?
- Did you convert every amount at the rate from the day before each transaction?
- Are shares and crypto in separate sections of the form?
- Did you round the base first, and only then the tax?
- Do you have trade confirmations saved in case the tax office asks?
The return for 2025 is filed between 15 February and 30 April 2026.
This article is educational and is based on the Ministry of Finance information brochure for the PIT-38 return for 2025. It is not tax advice. For anything unusual — inheritances, gifts, large network fees, income from several countries — talk to a tax adviser.