IKE, IKZE or PPK? Polish Retirement Accounts Calculator

We compare three ways of saving the same amount out of your pocket every month. With an ordinary brokerage account you invest the whole amount. With “IKE only” you pay it into an IKE up to the yearly limit and the rest into an ordinary account. With “IKZE + IKE” you fill the IKZE limit first, then the IKE, and only then the ordinary account. The tax refund for a year's IKZE contributions goes into the IKE in April of the following year (or into the ordinary account if it doesn't fit). The last year's refund only arrives after the withdrawal, so we add it to the result as cash.

The IKZE tax refund is the tax on your income minus the tax on your income reduced by the IKZE contributions. On the scale, the tax is 12% of income up to PLN 120,000 minus a PLN 3,600 tax-reducing amount, and 32% of anything above PLN 120,000. On the flat tax the refund is 19% of the contributions. An employee's income is 12 × (gross salary × (1 − 13.71% ZUS contributions) − PLN 250 employee costs), and a business on the scale has 12 × its monthly income. On withdrawal, each account is taxed under its own rules. Ordinary account: 19% of the gain. IKE: nothing if you withdraw from age 60 and contributed in at least 5 calendar years, or made more than half of the contributions at least 5 years before the withdrawal request — otherwise 19% of the gain. Steady contributions over fewer than 5 years meet neither condition. IKZE: 10% of the whole amount if you withdraw from age 65 and contributed in at least 5 calendar years. Earlier, the whole IKZE amount is added to that year's income and taxed on the scale — for a business on the flat tax, from zero, because its income is outside the scale.

Every account grows each month by the return ÷ 12 and then receives the contribution — as in the compound interest calculator. The first month is a January, and limits and contribution years are counted in calendar years. Each month your PPK contribution and your employer's go into PPK, and the state adds PLN 250 after 3 full months and PLN 240 for every year whose contributions reach PLN 1,009.26 (paid in April of the following year). The cost of PPK is your contribution plus the income tax on your employer's. For comparison we pay the same amount into an IKE every month. From age 60 we count the whole PPK value, tax-free. Earlier, we count a “zwrot”: 30% of the money from the employer's contributions goes to your ZUS account (we don't count it as cash), the state's payments are returned, and you pay 19% on the gain of the rest. The result in today's money is the value divided by (1 + inflation)^years.

Assumptions: a steady return every year, the same in every account and in PPK (in reality returns go up and down, and PPK funds change their mix with age), a fixed monthly amount and a fixed salary in złoty, and the 2026 limits and rules for the whole period. We leave out fees (PPK management fees are capped at 0.5% a year plus up to 0.1% for performance), the lump-sum tax (ryczałt), joint filing with a spouse, other reliefs, the health contribution and the ZUS contribution cap. We don't model IKE withdrawals from age 55 with pension rights, or PPK withdrawals for a down payment or serious illness. PPK paid out in instalments is compared at its value on the withdrawal date. For an early IKZE withdrawal we assume you have the same income in the year you withdraw as today (your salary, or business income on the scale), so the whole IKZE amount is added to that income and taxed on the scale. If you have stopped working by then, the tax will be lower and the IKZE may come out better. In the PPK comparison we assume the IKE has a limit of its own — in reality everyone has one IKE limit, which only matters for large amounts. You can take money out of an IKE tax-free only from age 60, out of PPK from age 60, and out of an IKZE at the 10% flat tax from age 65. Investment returns are not guaranteed — the result is a scenario, not advice.