The tax office will check whether you pay the TV license fee. A new audiovisual fee is planned

TV license checks

In recent months, the Tax Office has begun to seriously check whether Poles pay TV license fees. Poczta Polska employees visit homes and verify whether fees are paid regularly. If they find any irregularities, they report the matter to the Tax Office, which further deals with it.

Thanks to these inspections, we managed to collect a lot of overdue fees. By the end of May 2024, almost PLN 6 million had been collected for overdue RTV license fees. This shows that many people have been avoiding paying so far.

Subscription fee and penalties for fee avoidance

In 2024, RTV license rates are PLN 8.70 per month for a radio license and PLN 27.30 per month for a TV license (including radio). These fees are mandatory for everyone who has a radio or TV. The money collected is used to maintain and develop public media, whose mission (at least in theory) is to provide reliable and objective information.

If you do not pay the subscription fee, you may be exposed to significant financial penalties. The penalty for failure to pay the RTV license fee is three times the annual fee for your TV set. This means that you will pay an additional PLN 1,165.20 for the TV and PLN 313.20 for the radio. Inspections will continue to ensure everyone is carrying out their responsibilities.

Who is the discount for? And who is fired?

If you decide to pay for the entire year in advance, you can benefit from a 10 percent discount. For example, the annual fee for a TV set is PLN 294.90 instead of PLN 327.60, and for a radio – PLN 94.00 instead of PLN 104.40.

People who meet certain criteria are exempt from subscription fees, including:

• people over 75 years of age

• people with a significant degree of disability, completely unable to work or having the first disability group

• war and military invalids

• people whose pension does not exceed half of the average salary

• Additionally, low-income people, the unemployed and young people up to 26 years of age are to be exempt from the new audiovisual fee.

New proposal: audiovisual fee

Recently, the idea of ​​replacing the subscription with the so-called audiovisual fee, proposed by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage.

The new fee is to be charged without the need to register RTV equipment, because – as the ministry argues – data from the Central Statistical Office show that over 95 percent households have at least one television set.

The audiovisual fee would be approximately PLN 10 per month, regardless of the type of receiver you have. It would be charged for each taxpayer earning income and for companies, and its amount would be indexed annually.

The plan assumes that the new audiovisual fee could be introduced as early as 2025, after making the necessary legislative changes. Its main goal is to tighten the fee collection system and ensure stable financing of public media.