Can a UK company hire in the Czech Republic?

Yes. Three routes exist, and they have been the same three since long before 2020. You can set up your own Czech company, usually a společnost s ručením omezeným, and become the employer yourself. You can engage the person as an independent business trading on an IČO, which is the route that raises questions about závislá práce and švarcsystém, set out in our post on employee misclassification in the Czech Republic. Or a Czech company can employ the person and assign them to work for you.

The reason the second and third routes exist at all is that Czech employment duties are performed locally and monthly. Contributions go to Česká správa sociálního zabezpečení and to whichever of the seven health insurers the employee has chosen. Income tax is withheld as zálohová daň and remitted to the Finanční správa. The employee is entered in the ČSSZ evidence zaměstnanců within 8 days of starting, and in practice the filings are electronic only, so the employer needs a Czech datová schránka to make them.

None of that is reachable from a UK company number. It is not a question of whether a UK employer is willing to comply; it is that the registrations the compliance runs through are Czech registrations, held by a Czech company.

This post takes the third route, the one most UK buyers are actually comparing, and answers the question they ask hardest: who is the employer, and does any part of the Czech relationship reach back to the UK parent?

Less than most UK finance teams expect, on the employment side. The work is performed in the Czech Republic, so Czech employment law governs the relationship, and it governed it in the same way before 2020. The zákoník práce does not ask where the client company is incorporated. It asks who the employer is, what the contract says, and whether the contributions were paid on time.

What did change is the company-law position behind that. A UK company is now a company from outside the European Union, so any route that depends on being established in the EU is closed to it, and the practical question narrows to the one every foreign parent has always faced: which company is going to be the Czech employer, and how quickly can it be one?

On the people themselves, one point is settled and worth stating plainly. Citizens of EU and EEA states and of Switzerland, and their family members, have free access to the Czech labour market under EU free movement. Czech law separately requires an employer to notify the Úřad práce before a foreign national starts work, and a failure to do so is the offence of nehlášená práce; the exact reach of that duty is something the employing company confirms case by case rather than something a marketing page should generalise about.

So the honest summary is that Brexit moved the UK client into the same position as any other non-EU parent buying employment in the Czech Republic, and left the Czech contract itself exactly where it was.

Our own Czech company is the employer. Your people are employed by it on Czech employment contracts under the zákoník práce, it pays them, it holds the personnel file, and the statutory employer duties sit with it rather than with your UK business. Your company directs the work: what the person does each day, what they are paid, how they are managed and when the role ends.

The market calls that arrangement an employer of record. Czech employment law contains no statutory category of that name. What Czech law regulates is zprostředkování zaměstnání: a company carrying on the activity in § 14 odst. 1 písm. b) zákona č. 435/2004 Sb. needs a licence from the Ministerstvo práce a sociálních věcí, a povolení ke zprostředkování zaměstnání, and must lodge a 1,000,000 CZK deposit, a kauce. Our Czech company holds that licence. The employment side of the same regime, agenturní zaměstnávání, is governed by §§ 307a to 309a zákoníku práce. If you want the mechanics rather than the statute, they are set out on Employer of Record Czech Republic.

One feature of that regime bears directly on a UK buyer’s pay planning. An assigned employee’s working and pay conditions must be no worse than those of a comparable employee of the company they work for, under § 309 odst. 5 zákoníku práce, and the duty falls on both companies. It is not a route to cheaper terms than your own pay structure supports.

A pracovní smlouva must be in writing, and each party keeps a copy. Only three things are mandatory content of the contract itself under § 34 zákoníku práce: the druh práce, meaning the type of work; the místo výkonu práce, the place or places of work; and the den nástupu do práce, the start date. Everything else can live in the contract, in a separate mzdový výměr, in an internal regulation or in a collective agreement, and is communicated to the employee in writing under the information duty in § 37.

Several other terms exist only if they are written down. A zkušební doba has to be agreed in writing and no later than the day employment begins, and since 1 June 2025 it can run to 4 months, or 8 months for a vedoucí zaměstnanec. A fixed term has to be agreed in writing or the relationship is indefinite. So does a konkurenční doložka, an agreement on práce na dálku, and any notice of termination. Our post on Czech employment contracts goes through the full list.

For a UK buyer the practical consequence is a change of paperwork rather than a change of intent. Your UK offer document describes the role and the package; the Czech contract is issued and signed by the employing company, in Czech or in a bilingual version, and it is that document the labour inspectorate and the employee’s own lawyer would read. Your company signs a services agreement with us instead, which is where the commercial terms, the notice arrangements and the intellectual property assignment sit.

Gross salary, plus 33.8% in statutory employer contributions, plus compulsory accident insurance, plus our fee. The 33.8% is social security at 24.8% collected by ČSSZ and health insurance at 9% paid to the employee’s own insurer, both for 2026, and the two systems are legally separate with separate rules and separate payment channels.

Accident insurance is the line foreign buyers miss. Every Czech employer with at least one employee is insured by operation of law against its liability for occupational injury and disease, at a rate set by activity between 2.8 and 50.4 per thousand of the contribution base, with 5.6 per thousand for the residual category. That takes the real employer overhead to roughly 34.1% to 34.8% on top of gross pay, depending on what the business does. Our post on the cost of hiring in the Czech Republic runs the whole calculation on a stated salary.

The employee side is 11.6%, being 7.1% social and 4.5% health, deducted from gross, with income tax withheld on top. Contributions and the tax advance are remitted between the 1st and the 20th of the following month; the mechanics are in our post on Czech payroll.

Our own fee is €499 per employee per month, approximately 12,151 CZK at 24.350 CZK to the euro, the ČNB fixing for 21 September 2026. It is quoted in euro because the contract is in euro, and it is the only figure on this page that leads in a currency other than the koruna.

In the Czech Republic, on Czech-source employment income, whatever the UK client’s position is. Withholding is the employing company’s duty and it happens monthly: zálohová daň at 15% on the part of the monthly base up to 146,901 CZK for 2026 and 23% above it, reduced by the sleva na poplatníka of 2,570 CZK a month where the employee has signed a prohlášení poplatníka with that employer.

Residency is a separate question from where the tax is withheld. A person is a Czech tax resident if they have a bydliště in the Czech Republic or habitually stay there, which means being present for at least 183 days in the calendar year, counting every day started. Residents are taxed on worldwide income; non-residents only on Czech-source income. Non-residents receive no credits at all at the monthly withholding stage, and the spouse, disability and child reliefs reach them only where they are resident in an EU or EEA state and at least 90% of their income is Czech-source, proved by a certificate from the foreign tax administration.

Two practical points follow for a UK parent. From 2026 the employer records each employee’s country of tax residency in the ČSSZ registry, and residency is not the same as citizenship, so the question gets asked at onboarding rather than at year end. And a double tax treaty may change where a particular item of income is taxed, which is a question for the employee’s own adviser on their own facts rather than something an employing company answers in a contract.

An employee with employment income only, all of it under a prohlášení, can ask the last employer for a roční zúčtování by 15 February after the year end; the employer performs it by 31 March and refunds any overpayment above 50 CZK with the March payroll.