Poland, whats it really like?
The above picture is the mountains in the north.
Where do I start regards to Poland? Well let us start with the dreaded "Tax"........ There is no council tax on properties for a start!............ When I left the UK, I was paying over £1250 per year Tax on each property I owned.
Tax on fuel/cars. There is no yearly tax on cars! Tax is included in the price of fuel, the more you use the more you contribute to the roads, it is still cheaper to buy petrol than the UK and most if not all of the EU!.
Tax in shops whilst shopping - You can claim it all back at any border!....
If you want to work here though, They tax you a "lot"....................
Vehicle insurance is also smarter than most countries, you insure the vehicle not the person driving. I can hand over the keys to any of my cars or motorbikes and anyone can drive/ride them.
Outside the large cities the public transport - Buses are small and as fast as cars, so they do not block the roads up with slow, large buses. They are also cheap. 50 pence or 3 zloty gets a trip 40 kilometers long!.
Trains! I once went on a night train, it arrived on time, it started to get full, so they pulled over and added more sleeper carriages. It still got there on time, and it was very cheap.
Sports and special events.
In the UK the price with regards to watching sport was getting ridiculous, as were concerts, and I liked attending both!. A premier league football match here costs me £3 to attend (up to £125 in the UK). You have to register for a club ID card before attending due to football violence of years gone by. A music concert is around half the price you pay in the rest of Europe, so most "big" bands do not like to play here.
The weather!
Us Brits are obsessed by it, the weather that is. The spring to autumn here is much nicer than anywhere in the UK, and rain is rare. It is currently 6c here today and mild for winter time. BBQ'S are a plenty in the spring to autumn.
It can top 40c in the summer with no problems.
The EU open border policy!
The Polish are vehemently opposed to mass migration with regards to single African or middle eastern males with no papers/documents! The benefit system here sucks for locals and it sucks for migrants too. Any that came here for a free ride went back to Germany and Sweden as fast as they arrived!.
The Polish have a sit in at the borders with Germany once a year, to make sure the government hear them loud and clear with regards to not taking in Merkels invites!.
Are there any refugees here? YES.
I have Syrian friends here, a whole family of them. 1 man, his wife and 2 children. They came over with documents and applied to stay here until Syria is free from the western backed proxy war for oil. They both (the parents) attend a college in Lublin with regards to becoming doctors. He works 2 jobs also, & plays in local bands inside bars and special events (the guitar). They genuinely add fabric to the society and speak English, Syrian and Polish.
So anyone saying Poland does not take refugees is talking out of their anus!.
Holidays!
As this is not my home country, technically anywhere I go, that I have never visited before, is like a holiday to me. So all of my holidays for the last 4 years and 6 months have been in Poland!. My favorite places are of course my own farm, Krakow & Zakopane. All are way cheaper to visit than being in the UK.
Anything else you want to know please feel free to ask me below!.
Hi @shepz1,
Great to hear you have swap UK to Poland, but I have just one, very important question. What is your source of income? What are you doing for living?
Poland is my home country, but since I finished my studies and got diploma I left it and don't want to come back and live here. What you have said is true, but for majority of the Poles price of fuel is extremely high comparing to their salaries. You must pay taxes in every liter of fuel and for highways which were built from our taxes. It's interesting how many people have left country to live in UK, Germany, Netherlands, Denmark etc. because polish government keep putting new taxes for everything. Almost 40% of your salary goes to them and when you realize that the law they are forcing is only to make rich people richer and middle class people will stuck where they are. Unemployed, who never worked is receiving enough social help to stay at home and don't even try to find a job. Employers are suffering for lack of people to work, so they are hiring Ukrainians. Now their language , I would say, is the second, most used language in Poland. Even mobile operators posters are in Ukrainian.
Anyway, if everything would be so great as you are saying people would fight to live in Poland, but actually most of them want to work in western Europe and live here, because is cheaper this way. It's very hard for average man to work and live here.
Hi, I am retired so no longer work.
I fully understand everything you say, and it is all by design, they opened the UK and the EU up to Poland and other countries to import people that would do the jobs UK workers would no longer do.
As the average native worker in countries like the UK always want more money, it was easier to get less demanding workers from other countries.
I have lived with and worked with Polish in the UK, so know you/them well.
My wife is Polish and she says the same as you, that for her it is expensive and the tax is too high.
The Polish boarder to Ukrain was opened on purpose, their wage is lower than Polands. As you replace the Brit workers, the Ukranians replace you in Poland and so it goes on for ever more. Capitalism and the need for ever more profit at it's finest of examples.
As most Polish do not vote in the UK, so most Ukranians will not vote in Poland, the politicians can then keep raising tax.
Hi shepz. I actually found that very interesting.Not like your other posts aren't either. The insurance on the vehicle makes perfect sense along with the road tax included in the fuel price.
Cheers, and no offense ever taken here, even if you say my other posts are shitty. :-)
Yes it does make a lot of sense, and so does right turns at traffic lights, you can nearly always turn without waiting, as you filter in, so less traffic jams. In fact the last traffic jam I saw was in France, 5 years ago.
Bążur @shepz1!
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Baw się dobrze!
At least in Australia we only insure the car and not the person. What is the cost of electricity like in Poland? I believe food is also quite cheap there. Thanks for the Polish insights on costs. Stay safe out there :)
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Electricity is also cheap here.
I can go to a local bar and have 1 large main course for 3 people, a bottle of red wine, a soft drink or two for my daughter, and get change for £10. So a hell of a lot cheaper than the UK, as a pint of beer alone in the UK was over £3 when I left, and a bottle of house red wine more than £10 on it's own. :-)
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Cheers for that mate :)
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Most welcome. :-)
How's the off grid living around there (thinking about water too) and gun policy etc, you are making me want to be your neighbor lol, keep it up my friend.
I have solar and nobody complains, also I did not need to bribe anyone to get authorization to install it.
I have a well in the yard so water is free too.
I have a shotgun, hunting rifle, a 6 shot pistol in the kitchen draw, a small 6 shot in the glove-box in my car, and I never asked anyone's permission to have them lol.
Wow that sounds great and if the price of the land is not very high it's almost heaven, I'll have to take a look, apart from the harsh winters, seems like the poland dream.
Land prices are also cheaper than most of the EU I would guess.
And only January is really cold, and that is over within a month so nothing to fear. :-)
I will definitely have to keep an eye on it, not sure about foreign real state investment but seems really good to try it or at least investigate it just in case, I'm all ears if you find one of those sweet deals lol.
:-) I can help you locate some land no problem at all my friend.
I'll plan a visit to the country to have a contact and see how things look, you know I like the government and taxes as much as you do but unfortunately I still don't have enough capital to be financially free, although I still don't rule out any option, thanks for all the information bro.
A good place to start is a trip to krakow, followed by Lublin or Tarnow, the last two places are smaller, so you can get more of a feel for the place. If I did it all again Zakopane would be where I would land also.
If you can get to Lublin I can hook up with you easier, should you want some company. :-)
Ekhm, i dont want to worry you but...
This is illegal. This is what I rather do not like about my country. We have very restrict gun policy. To have, and to buy legaly weapon you need to have premission from police, and it is not an easy task...
So i hope you wont get cought with this weapons ;)
Thank you btw for this very nice post.
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I have a farm, it is legal to own weapons on a farm, to my knowledge at least. If not, well they can try to take them off me. :-)
Thanks for the complement.
Really interesting - but I have to say insuring the vehicle rather than the driver makes no sense at all - accidents are caused by drivers...
I don't know about other countries, but in the UK it's kind of the driver and the car combined which are insured. So as an insured driver, you are still only insured for one vehicle. If you want to drive any vehicle, then that's another insurance again and it's usually prohibitively expensive. So having the vehicle insured means that anyone who drives it is covered by that insurance, which makes things much easier if someone needs to drive your car urgently.
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Yes, in NZ it is primarily the car that is insured, and now I can see why that is important. It's pretty expensive though.
Australia is the same as you. It's still cheaper than the UK though!
Wow! - and we are a lot cheaper than Aussie - they are legendary for their car fee rip offs..
I have heard a lot of things are better in NZ. Maybe we emigrated to the wrong country! I've also heard NZ is harder to get a visa for though. :(
The UK is expensive all around. My daughter hadsjust come back from a trip there and couldn't believe how expensive it was to do anything there. Even public transport is expensive. Come winter there's nothing to do unless you've got money to spend.
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What part of Aussie are you in?
With cars NZ has no car industry to protect so we have free open import of all the used cars from Japan, and while motorbikes are taxed off the road with $700 annual regos, cars are $120.
And tidy used Jap cars go for about $5000
For me the issue with Aussie is heat - if it goes over 25 degrees I feel like I'm going to drop dead...
We're in SA.
We no longer have a car industry now either! All the factories shut down last year adding to our jobless rate. Wow, even motorbike rego is less than car rego here! The Ute is over $1000 now and the car over $800. You'd think they'd want to encourage bikes. Less traffic congestion, less polluting, less wear on the roads. Whats to discourage? Don't tell me they blame all drug dealing and crime on them there too?
SA has a really dry heat most of the time, so 25 is about t-shirt weather, 30 is shorts as well then 40 and up is death!!
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The whole thing is covered, people and the vehicle, instead of just the driver.
We sort of have that here - the car is covered for all drivers so long as they are over 25 with a full licence and no convictions
Makes perfect sense, oh fuck, now I have to listen to Roger Waters singing that song. :-)
SHHH you conspiratorial soldier you
That might explain why so many Polish worked hard in the UK for about 10 years, sending most of it back until they could afford to buy a place outright and go back and live off UK money. It's a win, win situation for the government too, bringing in more money.
What is the income tax percentage if you work in Poland?
Tax on fuel and not the car makes so much more sense. Of course everywhere else wants to double dip. As "j" said, in Australia we also insure the vehicle, although it's cheaper if you have only people over 30 drive it.
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Yes it does explain why so many Polish people exploit the UK, that is why they were invited in the first place, us Brits got lazy, and I do not mind admitting it.
No idea, I do not work here.
If you think back to the early 1970's the Indians and Pakistanis did the same as the Polish in the UK, you had 10 or 15 to a house, they saved up, and sent all the money home!
Yup. Something most Brits wouldn't do. They struggle to work with each other for a start and it's easier to just get loans to get what you want straight away.