Business authorisation

First, let us look at the types of trade. The Czech Republic has 4 types: unregulated, regulated, craft and concession trades. 

A large proportion of trades are unregulated — for example, buying and selling goods, marketing services or rentals. Unregulated trades have no special requirements. You simply go to the Trade Licensing Office, tick the list of all the trades you want and you are done. 

Regulated trades include tattooing, working with chemicals and accounting too. 🙂 For these trades you must meet certain requirements — usually education, qualifications and experience. 

Craft trades include food processing and hairdressing. These trades are traditionally occupations taught through apprenticeships. Registering a trade always requires a combination of education and experience, or more than 6 years' experience in the field.

The final type is concession trades. These include road transport operations and alcohol production. The conditions for individual concessions are listed under the relevant trades.

Have you found no suitable trade authorisation? Your business idea may not require a trade licence and may instead need a different authorisation. This group of liberal professions includes most medical professions (doctors, pharmacists, etc.), notaries, auditors, tax advisers, interpreters and artists. The full list is here. Practising these professions usually requires specific certifications and examinations set by the relevant organisations, such as the Medical Chamber or the Chamber of Tax Advisers.

General conditions

General conditions also apply to registering a trade. Anyone can register who:

  • is over 18 (or from 16 with parental and court consent)
  • has legal capacity (their legal capacity is not restricted)
  • has no disqualifying criminal record

These conditions may not apply to the liberal professions. For example, artists and athletes have no age limit.

Secondary or main self-employment

It is also worth clarifying whether your business will be your main or secondary self-employed activity. 

Main self-employment, put simply, supports you and is your primary source of income. Secondary self-employment is usually something on the side alongside another activity — studying, employment, caring for a child or retirement. People receiving a disability pension always have secondary self-employment. 

Registering a trade

Do you already know which trade or trades you want to register, and do you meet all the conditions? Then it is time to explain how registration works! Ideally, arrange everything directly at the Trade Licensing Office — you need your identity card, the CZK 1,000 administrative fee and a completed form. If your trade requires additional documents (proof of education, experience or documents from your responsible representative), do not leave them at home. 🙂 

If you have a personal data box, you can arrange everything online using the single registration form. 

The Trade Licensing Office will send your trade authorisation with your assigned company registration number by registered post to your permanent address or to your data box, or you can collect it in person. On the date you selected to start your business, you are entered in the Trade Register. 

When registering, you can also save yourself a great deal of work and simultaneously notify the health-insurance and social-security institutions of your new trade through the Trade Licensing Office (remember to state whether self-employment is your main or secondary activity!) and the tax office. Do not wait for the Trade Licensing Office clerk to suggest it: ask for this single registration yourself. If you apply through a data box, remember to tick all the authorities you want notified of your new trade.

Different dates for registering a trade and starting activity

If you want to report a later activity start date than your trade-registration date, you must visit the authorities or send the documents yourself. You have 8 days from actually starting the trade (when you really began self-employment — your first order, for example) to notify your health insurer and social-security authority . You can prepare the registration forms for the VZP health insurer and the Social Security Administration in advance. If you are insured with a provider other than VZP, find the form on its website.

All these forms must be submitted to the health-insurer branch and Social Security Administration office responsible for your place of residence. You can also submit them from home using a data box registered under your company registration number. 

In my view, there is nothing to fear, although various companies will register a trade for you as a complete service. In practice, one visit to the Trade Licensing Office is enough and you are sorted. If anything is unclear, I will be happy to explain it further. 

This is the first article in the New to self-employment series; the next article covers advance payments for health insurance and social security.