A reminder from your friendly neighborhood Tax-Man

Well tax season is almost upon us again so here are some friendly advices to make it all easier for everyone.

This is mostly for people who are employed or self-employed aka OSVČ (fyzické osoby). If you have a company (právnická osoba) than I’m going to assume you have an accountant so you (hopefully) don’t need advice from some rando on reddit.

First, some general stuff.

* 1) Do NOT leave this until the last day, it will just make it harder for everyone. Now obviously often you need time to get necessary paperwork from your bank, insurance company, employer,… meaning you can’t file everything immediately after new years, but surely you don’t need 3 months.

* 2) File online. Go to [mojedane.cz](www.mojedane.cz) where you can find pretty much all the necessary forms. You don’t even need a “datová schránka”, you can also use “bankovní identita” or you can just send it without any registration and then drop-off a signed paper (can just drop-off in a box, don’t need to go inside). And even if you decide to print out the forms to have a stamped copy, you can still fill them out here and it will correct a lot of common mistakes, decreasing the odds you’ll have to go back to the tax office to fix something.

* 3) Always, always ask. If you’re not sure about something, anything, you can always call or email your local tax office. It’s always better than filing in the forms wrong and then having to go there to fix it. Connected to no. 1, the sooner you ask the better. If you try calling on 31.3. when everyone is extremely busy, you probably won’t have much luck or you will get someone very annoyed. The people working there are also just people who are usually overworked and working a lot of overtime around this time.

* 4) Fill out current contact info and respond to contacts. This includes SMS messages and emails. Often it’s necessary to fix some mistakes and the tax office also has deadlines they have to follow, especially if you want them to send you back some money. And neither side will profit from having to start a whole months long administrative process just because of something that could have been solved in 5 minutes or by emailing a copy of some paper from your bank.

* 5) Include connected paperwork. Everything that lowers your taxes (mortgage interests, charity gifts for income tax, new (electric, gas,…) car discount for road tax) needs to be proved meaning you have to attach a copy/scan of said paper, or you will get a call from the tax office asking you to bring/mail it in anyway. Better if you attach some paper you didn’t have to, than other way around.

Now onto specific taxes. I’ll write about the three most common taxes in this part of the year (road tax, property tax and income tax). Yes, I realise there’s also VAT(DPH) but that concerns relatively small amount of people who usually have accountants to do it for them…

* **1) property tax**

You only need to file tax forms for this tax if there was some change in properties you owned this year (bought new house, sold a piece of a field, inherited a small forest,…) if there were no changes you don’t have to file anything and you should get mail (složenka) which tells you just how much you need to pay.

Usually the deadline to file the forms is 31.1., but if there were some changes (see above) around the end of the year, you have time until 31.3., since the paperwork obviously takes a while when it comes to property transfers.

Don’t worry about attaching “výpis z katastru” as they have remote access and can check it out themselves, but if you attach it, nothing bad will happen.

* **2) Road tax.**

With some highly specific exceptions, you only need to file and pay this tax if you used your car as OSVČ, so if you have a normal job and drive your car there or to shopping, don’t worry about it.

Some tips many people don’t know.

First up, date of first registration. Check your “technický průkaz” (the large one) for this date, if your car is new, you can get up to 48% discount, depending on the exact age. The online form will automatically calculate this discount for you.

Next up, if your car is electric or uses other “alternative fuels” (mostly natural gas) you do NOT have to pay any tax on this car. Technically you should file the forms which say your total tax is 0, but nobody would really care if you didn’t.

And the last tip, you only pay for the months when you used the car so if you were sick a whole month or on a long vacation, you don’t have to pay for that month. (exception to this are trucks over 12 tonnes)

The deadline for this is also 31.1.

If you have a new car and are applying for any of the discounts mentioned above, attach a copy/scan of your “technický průkaz”. Unlike property tax, only a very selected few people have remote access to car registry making it really hard to check every tax form this way.

* **3) Income Tax**

Okay so this is the big one everybody’s waiting for.

First up, the easy stuff, deadlines. 31.3. for paper forms, 30.4. for electronic forms, 30.6. if you have certified tax advisor (not a “normal” accountant).

Next up, if you only have income from your job (no OSVČ, or anything else) and you’re just filing it because of the discounts, there’s a shorter and easier version of the form “…pro poplatníky mající pouze příjmy ze závislé činnosti…”

Now the important parts. First up, the incomes. First is par. 6, or normal job. You should get or be able to request a paper from your employer saying how much you earned, how much they deducted for taxes and insurances, etc. Just copy info from this to the form and you’re done. Do NOT FORGET to attach a copy of this to the tax form.

Next up is OSVČ income. Fairly easy to understand, just fill out incomes and expenses (or use percentages if you want/can) one important thing I’ll point out is income from AirBnB and similiar sites are included in this tax. And yes, the tax office can and will find out how much you made on these and they will come after you for it.

Next is capital incomes. This usually means income from selling stock. These are not taxed under certain conditions, mainly that total income in a year is less than 100 000 or that you owned the stock for more than 5 years. If it’s inherited stock, the time of the previous owner also counts, so if your grandparents leave you some ČEZ stock they owned since coupon privatization, you can sell it without waiting… There are also some other cases, but this one applies most often…

Next is rent income. Again, fairly easy to understand, it’s what you made by renting your house/apartment/field… to someone else. You just fill out how much income you had. If you don’t have exact accounting (or if it’s better for you), you can claim that your expenses were 30% of your income made from rent.

Last one is “others”. Most usually this is income from selling your property (příjem z prodeje nemovitosti). This only applies in some cases. If you lived there for at least 2 years, you do NOT pay. If it’s another property, either one you rented out or some field, you need to own it for 10 years, or you will have to pay the tax. So if you inherit your grandparents house and decide to sell it immediately, you will have to pay tax from this. There are however 2 deductions.

1) how much you paid for it. Basically, if you buy a house and sell it a few months later, you only pay tax on the difference.

2) if you use it for “personal housing needs”. Again, if you inherit your grandparents apartment, sell it but you use the income to build a new house or do some major renovations, you can deduct what you spent on the construction/renovation, so you may not even pay anything (depending on how much you earned, spent on renovations,…)

These are all the income types. Next up deductions. Most are fairly easy to understand, just copy the number from the paper onto the form. **But like I said, for every deduction, you need a paper.** When it comes to kids, at least get a paper (čestné prohlášení) from the other parent saying they didn’t claim the kids on their taxes. If you’re divorced, attach a copy of the divorce papers (if you already did last year, you can but don’t have to attach the copy again). And last but not least, “personal discount”. If you only worked for a part of the year, for example you were still in school or just unemployed, your employer during the rest of the year didn’t use the whole discount so you can apply to get it returned. To “prove” it, attach a confirmation of study or the paper you get from labour office saying between which dates you were registered.

Disclaimers: I’m not a tax-advisor so this isn’t an official tax advice. I also didn’t cover every possible scenario, as there’s just too many to cover. If you want to ask about something more specific, feel free to ask in the comments, me or maybe some other helpful people will try to answer.

**Or like I said, ask at your local tax office, the sooner you ask and file everything, the better!**

P.S. I wanted to make this a bit longer and more detailed, but it’s late and I’m tired so, maybe next year…