PIT-11, PIT-4R, PIT-8AR and IFT-1R for 2026: the 1 February and 1 March 2027 deadlines and the three totals that must agree

January Is a Reconciliation Month, Not a Filing Month

Every office with payroll clients knows the dates. Fewer treat January as what it really is: the one point in the year when three things are forced to meet — the advances a client withheld, the money it actually paid the tax office, and the forms it sends to people. If they don't agree, the difference doesn't go away. It comes back in March as a corrected PIT-11 and a phone call from an employee whose Twój e-PIT no longer matches.

This year the calendar doesn't help. Both end-of-month deadlines fall on a Sunday, so everything shifts by one day under art. 12 § 5 of the Tax Ordinance:

Form	What it reports	Goes to	Deadline for 2026
PIT-4R	advances withheld, month by month (employment, mandates, board fees)	tax office	Monday 1 February 2027
PIT-8AR	flat-rate tax withheld (200 zł mandates, dividends, interest and similar)	tax office	Monday 1 February 2027
PIT-11	income, costs, contributions and advances for one person	tax office (electronically)	Monday 1 February 2027
PIT-11	the same document	the employee or contractor	Monday 1 March 2027
IFT-1R	income paid to a non-resident and tax withheld	the non-resident and the tax office	Monday 1 March 2027

That table is the easy part. The useful part is the three checks behind it.

Total One: PIT-11s Against PIT-4R

PIT-4R is the payer's view: how much it withheld in each month. Each PIT-11 is the person's view: how much was withheld from them over the year. For a typical employer with no exotic income streams, the sum of the advances across all PIT-11s equals the annual PIT-4R. Not roughly. To the złoty.

When it doesn't match, the cause is nearly always one of four things:

1. A missing PIT-11. Someone left in March, the payroll module archived them, and the batch export only picks up active staff. Their advances are in PIT-4R and nowhere else.
2. A refund within the year. Too much withheld one month, handed back the next. PIT-4R shows the net figure for the month; the PIT-11 may show the gross.
3. A payment on the wrong form. A 200 zł mandate taxed at the flat rate but sitting in payroll as if it were on the scale, or the other way round (more on that below).
4. Board fees and mandates paid outside payroll. A management board member paid by a plain transfer straight from the bank. The advance was paid, PIT-4R has it, and nobody created the PIT-11.

For a client with 15 employees, the check takes ten minutes if the data exports cleanly. On a 40-client portfolio with 300 to 400 PIT-11s, it's the thing that gets skipped on 29 January.

Total Two: PIT-4R Against the Bank

Most offices never run the second total at all. PIT-4R says what the client withheld. The bank statement says what the client paid into its tax microaccount. The two should match month by month, with each month's advances due by the 20th of the next. December 2026 advances are due by 20 January 2027 — a Wednesday, so no weekend shift this time.

This check catches something different. Total One finds paperwork errors. Total Two finds money errors:

• a month where the advance was declared but never paid, because the transfer bounced or someone paid the VAT microaccount by mistake (it's the same microaccount number for both, but the transfer title has to name the right tax);
• a month paid twice — an overpayment that sits there because nobody claims it;
• a late payment, which means interest the client doesn't know it owes.

You already have the statement data. If you import bank statements for the books, every payment to the microaccount is a line with a date and an amount. Matching twelve PIT-4R months against twelve transfers is mechanical work. It's also the check that turns up the most money, because once a tax payment looks about right, nobody reconciles it.

Total Three: Flat-Rate Tax and PIT-8AR

PIT-8AR collects everything taxed at a flat rate. For most small clients, that means two things: dividends paid by a sp. z o.o. to its shareholders (19%), and small contracts of mandate up to 200 zł (12%).

The 200 zł rule is where most of the mistakes happen. The flat rate (art. 30(1)(5a) PIT) applies only if both conditions are met:

• the amount stated in the contract is no more than 200 zł (so the contract has to name the amount);
• it is concluded with someone who is not an employee of the payer.

Then the payer withholds 12%, the payment goes into PIT-8AR, and no PIT-11 is issued for it. If the contractor is the client's own employee, the same 200 zł contract is taxed on the scale and goes into their PIT-11. I see offices get this wrong in both directions. A student who did one 150 zł job ends up with a PIT-11 they don't need. An employee who signed a side contract gets flat-rate treatment they aren't entitled to.

The check: list every payment under 200 zł outside the payroll and test it against the employee list. Then add up the flat-rate tax from the bank (the same microaccount again) and compare it with PIT-8AR month by month.

Dividends have their own catch. The tax is withheld on the day of payment, not the day of the resolution. A dividend voted in June and paid in December is December's PIT-8AR line. A dividend voted in December 2026 and paid in January 2027 isn't in the 2026 form at all.

Why Corrections After February Hurt

Since Twój e-PIT arrived, the PIT-11 is no longer a document the employee just files away. The tax office prefills each person's return from the electronic PIT-11s it received by 1 February, and the service usually opens in mid-February. Plenty of people accept their return in the first week.

Which means the date of a correction matters more than it used to:

• Before 1 February: the original never goes out. Nobody notices.
• Between 1 February and mid-February: the correction reaches the tax office before most returns are built. Usually harmless.
• After the employee has accepted their return: the employee has to file a correction. They will call the client. The client will call the office.

The usual reasons for late corrections are dull: a changed home address (which decides the employee's tax office), a PIT-2 filed or withdrawn during the year, a missed exemption for employees under 26, author's costs at 50% applied to the wrong pay component, and leavers missing from the batch (Total One again). Every one of them shows up in the three totals above — if you run them before sending.

Here's a number worth pulling for your own office: how many PIT-11 corrections did you file for 2025 after 1 February? If it's more than 2–3% of the forms you issued, carelessness isn't the problem. The checks are simply running after the deadline instead of before it.

A January Plan That Fits in Two Weeks

For a portfolio with payroll clients, I'd split it like this:

1. Week of 11 January: close December payroll and get the December advance and flat-rate tax paid by 20 January. (December pay paid in January belongs to the 2027 forms. See the December payroll post for why the PIT-11 totals never match the 2026 payroll cost.)
2. 20–22 January: run Total Two for every client, PIT-4R against the bank, all twelve months.
3. 22–26 January: run Totals One and Three. Fix the differences, not the forms.
4. 27–29 January: send PIT-4R, PIT-8AR and PIT-11 to the tax office. Keep the UPOs per client in one place. Missing UPOs are their own failure, covered in the missing UPO post.
5. By 1 March: PIT-11s and IFT-1Rs to the people.

Monday 1 February then becomes a buffer, not a target.

Where an Agent Fits

Totals One, Two and Three are the same kind of work as the month-end close checks: the data is already in the office (payroll export, bank statements, the declarations), the rule is simple, and things go wrong because nobody compares a few thousand lines across forty clients in one week. An AI agent for an accounting office reads those three sources, produces one list per client ("PIT-11 sum 41 220 zł, PIT-4R 41 870 zł, difference 650 zł = advances of an employee who left in March, no PIT-11 in the batch") and stops there. It doesn't send, correct or sign anything. A person decides what each line means.

Want the January reconciliation to run across your client list before 20 January? Get in touch. We'll start with one client's payroll export and statements, and you'll see the first difference list within a week.