The choice between the flat tax and the standard regime comes down to how much you spend to earn your income, not how much you earn. For a driver working as a carrier, costs are the biggest line in the calculation, and that line is what decides.
What the flat tax actually is
Paušální daň rolls income tax, social contributions and health insurance into a single fixed payment each month, and the paperwork shrinks along with it — there is nothing to calculate and no return to file, so an accountant is barely needed. In exchange you give up deductions: costs no longer reduce the base, because there is no base any more.
The regime is closed to VAT payers and capped by turnover. It has three bands (pásmo in Czech), and the regime as a whole ends at 2 000 000 Kč of self-employment income — that is the ceiling of the third band and of the regime.
What binds a driver, though, is the ceiling of the first band, because band one is the only one where the payment is low. And that ceiling is not a single number:
| Band-one ceiling | When it applies |
|---|---|
| 1 000 000 Kč | always, whatever the kind of income |
| 1 500 000 Kč | at least 75 % of income carries an 80 % or 60 % expense allowance |
| 2 000 000 Kč | at least 75 % of income carries the 80 % allowance |
Road haulage is a koncesovaná trade at every weight, not only above 3.5 t. Příloha č. 3 of the trade licensing act lists, under “Silniční motorová doprava”, “nákladní vnitrostátní provozovaná vozidly nebo jízdními soupravami o největší povolené hmotnosti nepřesahující 3,5 tuny”. None of it is vázaná — příloha č. 2 contains no road transport at all — and none of it is volná either, because obor 51 of the free trade expressly excludes road motor transport. What changes for light vehicles is the professional-competence requirement and the dopravní úřad’s involvement, not the kind of trade. The expense allowance is 60 %, so a driver’s band-one ceiling is 1 500 000 Kč. The 2 000 000 Kč figure that gets copied from article to article is not a carrier’s band-one ceiling: it is the ceiling of the whole regime, and above 1 500 000 Kč a driver can no longer be in band one at all.
Sources: zákon č. 586/1992 Sb., § 2a odst. 5 — “třetí pásmo paušálního režimu jsou příjmy ze samostatné činnosti do výše 2000000 Kč, a to bez ohledu na to, z jaké samostatné činnosti plynou”; and zákon č. 455/1991 Sb., příloha č. 3 — “Silniční motorová doprava […] nákladní vnitrostátní provozovaná vozidly nebo jízdními soupravami o největší povolené hmotnosti nepřesahující 3,5 tuny určenými k přepravě zvířat nebo věcí” — together with příloha č. 4, obor 51 — “Potrubní a pozemní doprava (vyjma železniční a silniční motorové dopravy)”.
What band one costs per month. The monthly flat advance in band one is 9 162 Kč. Inside that amount sit three payments: 100 Kč income tax, 5 756 Kč pension insurance and 3 306 Kč health insurance.
And watch the date on your source. The reduction applies only from 1 July 2026; anyone who paid 9 984 Kč a month from January to June is 4 932 Kč in credit. Tables written before July 2026 still show 9 984 Kč, and nobody goes back to correct them. Source: Finanční správa press release, 2026.
Why it works less well for a driver than for a programmer
A freelancer with a laptop has costs close to zero — for him the flat tax almost always wins. For a carrier the picture is reversed. Fuel, tolls, tractor rent and liability insurance are regular, documented costs, and on the standard regime every one of them reduces the tax base. Exactly which ones is worked through in Which costs actually reduce the tax base.
So for a driver the flat tax tends to win in a first, partial year with few loads, and starts to lose as soon as the truck is running normal mileage.
Calculate it, don’t guess it
Take one ordinary month: revenue minus fuel, tolls, rent and insurance. If the gap is still large, the flat tax is not for you — you would be paying tax on money you never get to keep.
When the decision is made
Entering and leaving the flat-tax regime is tied to the calendar year and has to be notified within a deadline. It is not something you can change in May, having seen that the numbers went the wrong way. That is why it is usually better to run the first year on the standard regime and decide on real figures — by then you will have them, including in the portal, where every cost per load is collected.
How the rest of an OSVČ’s payments work is on Trade licence in Czechia.
