The structure of the classification is based on the Statistical Classification of Economic Activities in the European Community (NACE), the Classification of Products by Activity (CPA) and the PRODCOM List (PRODCOM).

Concerning goods the Combined Nomenclature (CN) determines material scope of the PKWiU groupings.

PKWiU has been created mainly for statistical needs and for source record-keeping and it is the base for:

• compiling derivative nomenclatures of goods and services being the lists of goods' or services' groupings chosen from PKWiU and for reporting of production, sales, commodity turnover, reserves, transportation and similar,
• arranging the source record-keepings of economic subjects in the form of material indexes, commodities indexes and similar record-keeping tools.

PKWiU is 10-digits classification. Groupings at the level of 9th and 10th digit were created solely for the national needs to enable:

• further disaggregation of statistical data collected from economic subjects, which are designed for the national statistical needs;
• improvement and standardization of the source record-keepings of the economic subjects.
   
  The Polish Classification of Goods and Services in the international system of statistical classifications

The economic classifications are in statistics the main instrument for collection, elaboration as well as for presenting statistical data.

PKWiU in the international system of statistical classifications: 

PKWiU is integrally connected with the international economic classifications. It is harmonized and has conceptual, scope and coding correspondence with them.

How Polish Classification of Goods and Services is built?

The Polish Classification of Good and Services is the classification of the national and imported products being in the Polish economic circulation.

Products means goods and services. Goods means raw materials, semi-finished products, final goods, assemblies and parts – if they are in circulation.

The concept of services includes: 

• every activities provided for economic units, which carrying out manufacturing activities but not creating directly new material goods – services for manufacturing,
• every activities provided for the national economic units and for the population, designed for the individual, collective and national society consumption.

The Polish Classification of Good and Services groups products divided into ten levels.

The structure of PKWiU is as follow:

A - section
AA - subsection

xx – division
xx.x – group
xx.xx – class
xx.xx.x – category
xx.xx.xx. – subcategory
xx.xx.xx - xx – heading
xx.xx.xx. - xx.x – 9-digits grouping
xx.xx.xx. - xx.xx – 10-digits grouping

The last two levels of the structure (9 and 10-digits groupings) were created exclusively for the national statistical needs and for the source record-keepings of the economic units. Most of the groupings were created on the basis of the Combined Nomenclature and the others on using the Polish Standards or the solutions used in the economic practice.

The Polish Classification of Goods and Services (PKWiU) was established by the Regulation of the Council of Ministers of April 6th, 2004 (JL No 89, item 844) and it is legally binding from May 1st, 2004 for the following purposes only:

• commodities and services taxes,
• the collection of excise duties and for obligation to mark goods with the excise labels on the territory of the Republic of Poland,
• imposing the income tax on legal and physical persons or the flat rate income tax in the form of lump sum from recorded income and tax card – applied to the end of 2005. PKWiU was established by the Regulation of the Council of Ministers of March 18th, 1997 (JL No 42, item 264 with thereafter amendments).

In case of difficulty in establishing the proper grouping the interested unit may apply in writing for assistance in classifying a kind of activity, good or service, fixed asset, type of construction and for issuing an information, to the Centre of Standard in Classifications of the Statistical Office in Łódź, ul. Suwalska 29, 93-176 Łódź.