These are purchasing-power-parity dollars: the OECD converts Polish revenue into a common unit that reflects what money buys locally. That helps with international comparisons, but it is not $91.2 billion deposited into Polish accounts in US currency, nor does it show what tax rates residents paid.
The reading broke well clear of the previous pattern. Local tax revenue had reached an earlier high of $69.5 billion in PPP-adjusted dollars in 2022, then slipped to $63.2 billion in 2023. The broader subnational government revenue measure, which also includes grants and other receipts, rose by a smaller 20.5% in 2024.
A Polish parliamentary record says the tax-revenue increase largely reflected an extra PLN 8.2 billion allocated to local governments from personal income tax, plus a PLN 1.6 billion correction for personal-income-tax shares underpaid for 2022. That highlights a naming trap: local tax revenue can include councils’ assigned share of a nationally collected tax, not just levies they set and collect themselves.
Poland ranked sixth among 37 countries on this measure in 2024. Because it compares total revenue rather than revenue per resident or as a share of the economy, the ranking favors larger countries and is not a league table of tax pressure or local-government performance.
For councils, the distinction between recurring revenue and a one-off settlement matters. A durable tax base can support continuing commitments such as schools, transport and municipal services; a temporary allocation offers less certainty. For households, the headline does not mean that local tax rates or bills rose by 44.3%.