🇨🇿 Czech Republic — OSVČ Health & Social Insurance Base in 2026

What are the minimum and maximum insurance bases for Czech OSVČ in 2026?

For freelancers using real expenses or recognized expenses (the two methods that go through a normal tax base calculation):

What does the minimum base actually mean?

Under the standard established-OSVČ minimum, even if your tax base (gross income minus expenses) is very low or zero, you still owe at least 39,664 CZK/year in health insurance and 60,056 CZK/year in social insurance. The new-OSVČ exception reduces the social part, but a Czech freelancer with a very low or loss-making year still has a real insurance bill.

Is there a lower minimum for a new OSVČ?

Yes. A main-activity OSVČ who starts self-employment for the first time, or restarts after not being an OSVČ in the preceding 20 calendar years, uses a social-insurance minimum base equal to 25% of the average wage in the start year and the next two calendar years.

For a full 2026 calendar year that means:

The reduction changes the result only while the normal assessment base — 55% of annual profit/tax base — is below 146,904 CZK. For a full year, that means it matters up to 267,098 CZK of annual profit/tax base.

Is there a cap on either one?

Social insurance stops growing once your tax base pushes the assessment base past 2,350,416 CZK/year — above that, every additional koruna of tax base adds nothing further to your social insurance bill. Health insurance has no equivalent cap; it keeps scaling at 13.5% of 50% of the tax base indefinitely.

The standard minimums, the reduced new-OSVČ social minimum, and the social cap work the same way under real expenses and recognized expenses. They don't apply to paušální daň (which bundles everything into one fixed payment) or to s.r.o. company taxation, which has no equivalent percentage-based insurance base. An s.r.o. owner who takes no salary and has no other employment or self-employment coverage still owes a separate, flat OBZP self-payer health insurance premium (~36,288 CZK/year) — a fixed personal cost rather than one calculated from a tax base.

See the recognized expenses guide for how this interacts with the recognized expense deduction.

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