Closing a business can be just as formalised as opening one. Winding up a sole proprietorship is not merely a single application to CEIDG (the Central Register of Business Activity) — it is a whole set of obligations towards ZUS (the Social Insurance Institution) and the tax office that must be completed within short deadlines of just a few days. Below we explain what steps await an entrepreneur closing their business in 2026 and what is easiest to forget. The deadlines are short, and some steps have to be done outside CEIDG itself, so it is worth planning the whole procedure in advance.
Removal from CEIDG and the „one-stop shop” principle
The basic step is submitting the CEIDG-1 application to be removed from the Central Register of Business Activity (CEIDG). In the application you state the date of the actual cessation of activity, and the application itself must be filed within 7 days of that date. The easiest way is to do it online at biznes.gov.pl, logging in with the Profil Zaufany (Trusted Profile) — a wizard guides you through the whole procedure. Removal from CEIDG is free of charge.
CEIDG operates on a „one-stop shop” model: information about the cessation of activity is automatically forwarded to the tax office, GUS (the Central Statistical Office) and ZUS or KRUS. This does not, however, release you from the remaining formalities, which the entrepreneur must handle themselves — concerning VAT, the deregistration of employees or the cash register.
Deregistration from insurance at ZUS
Although CEIDG forwards the information to ZUS, the deregistration itself takes place on the basis of automatically generated forms: ZUS ZWPA (deregistration of the contribution payer) and ZUS ZWUA (deregistration of the person running the business). You have 7 days from the cessation of activity to complete these formalities.
If you registered family members for health insurance, they must be deregistered using the ZUS ZCNA form. Entrepreneurs who employ staff must additionally deregister each of them using the ZUS ZWUA form within 7 days of the end of the employment relationship and settle the contributions due for them.
VAT — the VAT-Z notification and the liquidation inventory
An active VAT taxpayer is obliged to notify the head of the tax office of the cessation of taxable activities using the VAT-Z form — also within 7 days of the day these activities ended. After it is submitted, the entrepreneur is removed from the register of VAT taxpayers.
A separate obligation is the so-called liquidation inventory (remanent likwidacyjny) for VAT purposes. You draw up a stocktake of goods, materials, equipment and fixed assets that remain in the business on the liquidation date and on the purchase of which you were entitled to deduct VAT. The assets are valued at market prices as of the day of the stocktake, and VAT due is charged on that value. In practice this means that an entrepreneur who sells or uses up all their assets before closing the business will report an inventory worth zero and will not pay this tax.
Income tax — the stocktake and the list of assets
For PIT (personal income tax) purposes, a stocktake (closing inventory) is drawn up on the liquidation date, covering commercial goods, materials, equipment and work in progress. Its value is taken into account when calculating income and the final tax advance. As a rule, the tax office is notified in advance of the intention to prepare the stocktake.
Separately, a list of the assets remaining on the liquidation date is prepared. It matters for the future: if the entrepreneur sells such an asset within 6 years — counting from the first day of the month following the month of liquidation — the revenue from that sale will still be treated as revenue from business activity. The final step is filing the annual PIT return for the year in which the business was closed, under the rules applicable to the chosen form of taxation.
What is easy to forget
Liquidation does not cancel liabilities — unpaid contributions, overdue taxes and unsettled invoices continue to burden the entrepreneur and may be pursued after the business is closed. You must also remember to deregister the cash register and produce a closing report, terminate contracts (leasing, rental, subscriptions, the business account), and to keep the tax documentation for 5 years, counting from the end of the year in which the tax payment deadline fell. If the business had previously been suspended, winding it up proceeds similarly, but the closing settlements and the required stocktakes still have to be filed.