One of the Polish newspapers reported on a case of an inspection of ZUS in a translation agency. The agency is to pay overdue social insurance contributions along with statutory interest because the inspector decided that contracts for a specific work concluded with translators in the past couple of years do not comply with the regulations.

Contracts for a specific work are currently under scrutiny as ZUS is trying to fight with misuse of such contracts by employers. However, controls apply also to situations which are in fact standard practices in the translation industry, widely used by freelancers, and are neither new nor reprehensible.

Unfortunately, ZUS inspectors show no understanding of the translation market. According to the one who conducted the investigation in the above-mentioned case translators don't need to have any specialist skills and a specialist translation is not a unique, individual work. Therefore, ZUS is now bent on collecting overdue contributions from translation companies. Regulations concerning these types of employment contracts clearly require further amendments, so as to prevent differences in their interpretation. It remains to be seen how such changes will influence the translation industry if legislators decide to follow the line of reasoning of ZUS.