News
World Bank Warns: AI Could Shrink Poland's Budget by Up to 1% of GDP
A new World Bank report finds that AI-driven job automation could cut Poland's PIT and social security (ZUS) tax revenue by up to 1 percent of GDP at its peak. The institution suggests raising corporate tax (CIT), but Polish economists are pushing back.
Contents
The World Bank has published an analysis suggesting that the development of artificial intelligence could hit Poland's state budget within the next decade. Automation of cognitive work will reduce revenue from personal income tax (PIT) and social security contributions (ZUS), with the shortfall potentially reaching as much as 1 percent of GDP annually at its peak.
Where the numbers come from
World Bank analysts estimate that advancing automation of cognitive work will cut PIT revenue by 0.2 percentage points of GDP, and social security contribution revenue by another 0.6 percentage points. Combined, the peak shortfall in budget revenue from labor taxation could reach 1 percent of GDP, equivalent to tens of billions of zlotys a year at the current size of Poland's economy.
The mechanism is straightforward: the more analytical, clerical and partly creative tasks AI systems take over, the fewer jobs and salaries remain subject to PIT and ZUS contributions. The effect isn't unambiguously negative, though - the same report estimates that over a decade, AI could raise Poland's real GDP by as much as 1.3 percentage points, for cumulative growth of 12.1 percent.
A proposed CIT hike
The World Bank proposes offsetting the drop in labor taxes by raising taxes on capital and companies. Specifically, it suggests raising the effective CIT rate by 2 percentage points, from the current 19 to 21 percent - still below the OECD average of 24 percent. According to the institution's calculations, such a change could bring the budget an additional 0.5-0.6 percent of GDP a year, partly offsetting the PIT and ZUS shortfall.
CIT is today a significant, though not dominant, source of budget revenue. In 2025, corporate income tax brought the budget about PLN 92 billion, equivalent to 2.3 percent of GDP and 5.5 percent of all public finance sector revenue.
Economists push back
The proposal to raise CIT has met a cool reception among Polish economists. Kamil Sobolewski, chief economist at Pracodawcy RP (Employers of Poland), warns that tax hikes erode the tax base and could ultimately backfire.
Tax hikes cause erosion of the tax base - Kamil Sobolewski, chief economist at Pracodawcy RP
Łukasz Kozłowski, chief economist at the Federation of Polish Entrepreneurs (Federacja Przedsiębiorców Polskich), goes further, calling CIT a relatively inefficient source of budget revenue whose increases have a particularly negative impact on economic growth. Marcin Luziński of Erste shares a similar view, arguing that a higher CIT would encourage good business ideas to move abroad.
CIT is a relatively inefficient source of revenue, and increases have a particularly negative impact on economic growth - Łukasz Kozłowski, chief economist at the Federation of Polish Entrepreneurs
The problem of global AI providers
Karol Pogorzelski, an economist at Bank Pekao, points to another problem: the largest AI service providers, American and Chinese technology companies, use tax arbitrage and book their earnings in low-tax jurisdictions. Raising domestic CIT would change little when the key infrastructure and profits from AI are generated outside Poland - effectively taxing these companies would require international cooperation, not just domestic tax rules.
This is an important caveat from Poland's perspective, since the country is not currently home to major computing centers or labs developing AI models at scale. The tax base tied to the technology's development itself is forming mostly abroad, so Poland's budget mainly feels the cost side, the loss of labor-tax revenue, without a proportional gain from taxing the companies building these systems.
What comes next
Marcin Mrowiec, chief economist at Grant Thornton, urges the government to rein in what he calls the spiral of populist spending before reaching for tax hikes. The World Bank's recommendations are analytical in nature and not binding on the Polish government, but they feed into a broader discussion underway at the Ministry of Finance and among economists about how to prepare the tax system for the effects of automation.
For companies and workers in Poland, the report signals that taxing the effects of AI will sooner or later land on the legislative agenda - the question isn't whether, but when and in what form. For now, the Ministry of Finance has not announced any concrete changes to CIT rates.
Sources: Rzeczpospolita (rp.pl), Parkiet (parkiet.com).
