Zakopane has no right to collect it. The end of the resort tax? In these cases, it's illegal.
- The Supreme Administrative Court has ruled that the collection of a climate tax in Zakopane is illegal. Poor air quality precludes its legality.
- For a town to be eligible to charge a climate fee, it must meet stringent environmental standards, including no pollution and appropriate landscape values.
- When can you be exempt from paying the tourist tax?
As Forsal writes, the Supreme Administrative Court found that in some cases the tourist tax is collected illegally , and this was particularly evident in the case of Zakopane.
This local tax, also known as the "sojourn tax," is essentially a tax imposed on individuals staying for tourism, recreation, or training purposes for more than 24 hours in tourist destinations with favorable climatic and scenic features. The legal basis is the Act of January 12, 1991, on Local Taxes and Fees.
The following are exempt from paying the fee:
- people staying in hospitals,
- members of the diplomatic staff (with reciprocity),
- blind people with guides,
- owners of summer houses paying property tax in a given town,
- organized groups of school children and youth.
The municipal council may also grant additional exemptions.
The fee amount is set by the municipal council, but the Ministry of Finance publishes the maximum rates every year: for 2025, the maximum resort fee is PLN 3.31 per day.
It's worth emphasizing that the resort tax shouldn't be confused with the resort tax , which applies to towns with health resort status, such as Ciechocinek or Kołobrzeg. If a town collects a resort tax, it cannot also collect a resort tax. Currently, the resort tax is PLN 6.38 per night.
For many years, Zakopane, the winter capital of Poland, illegally collected a resort fee.
The case began in 2015 when a tourist questioned the legality of the tax, despite the city's annual revenue of approximately PLN 4 million. The Provincial Administrative Court in Kraków, and then the Supreme Administrative Court in 2018, ruled in his favor, arguing that air pollution in Zakopane prevented the legal collection of this tax. Despite the city's attempts to adopt a new resolution, the Supreme Administrative Court consistently ruled the decisions illegal, due to reasons including a lack of justification, references to invalidated documents, and the lack of improvement in air quality.
Moreover, despite the Supreme Administrative Court’s ruling of April 2025, Zakopane continues to collect the fee, currently at PLN 1.90 per day, which is the subject of interest of the Regional Chamber of Audit.
To legally collect the resort fee, a town must meet a number of conditions specified in a 2007 Council of Ministers regulation. The most important of these is an unpolluted environment, including no exceedances of permissible levels of air pollution and electromagnetic radiation. More than 80 percent of the municipality's area must be forests and agricultural land, and it must also contain landscape assets such as waterfalls, landscape parks, and historic buildings, as well as adequate accommodation facilities. It is expressly stated that the collection of the resort fee is prohibited in towns that exceed air pollution standards, regardless of their tourist attractiveness.
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