Set up as self-employed in Czechia

EU citizens can notify a trade and start. With permanent residence or international protection here, you trade on the same terms as a Czech citizen. Anyone else who needs a permit to stay shows the trade office a long-stay visa or a long-term residence permit, such as the long-term visa for business; temporary protection counts as a long-stay visa. You can notify the trade first and get the visa or permit afterwards, and your licence lasts only as long as your permit. On an employee card, read the last question below first.

Most freelance work is a free trade (volná živnost). It needs no proof of qualification, only full legal capacity and a clean criminal record, and the law lists its fields, such as software, consulting and translation. Vocational and bound trades (řemeslné, vázané živnosti), such as carpentry or accounting, need proof of training or a set qualification. You can notify several trades at once.

Cost

1,000 Kč for your first notice, however many trades it lists, and 500 Kč for each later notice that adds trades. Adding fields to your free trade costs nothing.

Bring your passport and a criminal record extract. EU citizens bring one from their own country or the EU country they last lived in; anyone else brings one from their own country, unless they have permanent residence here. The trade office requests the Czech extract itself. If your place of business (sídlo) isn't your permanent residence here, which it never is without one, bring proof that you may use it: the owner's written consent is enough, and Bytky's trade licence form writes it for you, in Czech, once you say someone else owns the place. Documents issued abroad need an apostille or superlegalisation, unless a treaty with the issuing country waives it, as Ukraine's does, and a Czech translation by a sworn court interpreter. EU citizens need neither unless the office has doubts.

Deadline

The criminal record extract may be no older than 3 months.

The trade office takes your notice on one form, the single registration form (jednotný registrační formulář). On the same form you can report your start to social security, apply for pension insurance and the voluntary sickness insurance, and tell your health insurer; the trade office passes them on and tells the tax office you've started. As a self-employed person, you don't register for income tax yourself. Bytky fills it in from your answers in English, Ukrainian or Czech, in your browser.

File the form at any trade office in Czechia, not only the one for your address, or at a Czech POINT counter, which sends it to the trade office you choose. Bring proof that you've paid the fee. If everything is in order, the trade office enters you in the trade register, gives you your identification number (IČO) and an extract. With most trades you may start on the day you notify. If you need a permit to stay, your right to trade starts on the day you show the trade office your visa or permit.

Cost

1,000 Kč, and 50 Kč more at Czech POINT.

Deadline

You're in the register within 5 working days. Waiting for a permit: show it within 3 working days of reporting your address here, and no later than 6 months after the extract was delivered to you.

Once you've started, a few things follow. The single registration form may already have done the first two.

Social security

Tell your district social security administration (ČSSZ) within 15 days of starting; it writes back with the account and the variable symbol to pay to. In a main activity, the advance for pension insurance is at least 5,005 Kč a month, or 3,575 Kč in the year you start and the next two if you weren't self-employed in the 20 years before. If you weren't self-employed in the last 5 years, you pay no advances in the year you start and the next, only what your overview later shows.

Health insurance

If you're in Czech public health insurance, tell your insurer within 8 days. In a main activity, the advance is at least 3,306 Kč a month in 2026, due by day 8 of the next month. From outside the EU and without permanent residence, you're usually in public insurance only with international or temporary protection, or a job with a Czech employer; otherwise you keep comprehensive insurance for foreigners.

Or the flat-rate tax

Instead, you can pay income tax, pension and health insurance in one monthly payment: 9,162 Kč a month in band I in 2026, by day 20 of each month. When you start, notify it by the day you start, and the trade office takes it with your form; for a later year, by 10 January. It's only for people whose income fits the band's limit, who are in Czech public health and pension insurance, aren't VAT payers and have no income from a job, among the act's other conditions.

Data box

Once you're in the register, the state sets up a free business data box (datová schránka) for you. The tax office writes to you there, and from then on you file your tax return online.

A bank account

You don't need one for the trade licence. You give your health insurer the number of the account you'll pay from, and a Czech account in crowns makes paying advances with a variable symbol simpler.

Invoices

Your invoices and other business papers show your name, your place of business, your entry in the trade register and your IČO.

Unless your tax is the flat-rate tax, for each year's income you file an income tax return, an overview of income and expenses for social security and another for your health insurer; on the flat-rate tax you file none of them. With a business data box you file the return online, which gives you 4 months after the year ends, or 6 months if a tax adviser files it; the tax is due on the same day. Each overview is due a month after the return's deadline; if you file the return within 3 months of the year's end, the overviews are due a month after that earlier deadline. With a data box, both overviews go in electronically too.

Deadline

For your 2026 income: the return by 3 May 2027, or 1 July 2027 through a tax adviser; the overviews by 3 June 2027, or 2 August 2027 with an adviser, or by 3 May 2027 if your return went in by 1 April 2027. The flat-rate tax for 2027: notify it by 11 January 2027.