VAT enters a driver’s life by two quite different routes, and the two get confused constantly. The first is turnover reaching the threshold. The second is that you have received or supplied a service from another EU country, and the status arises long before any threshold.
The turnover threshold
The VAT Act sets two thresholds, and they differ by more than the amount. What really separates them is the day you become a payer — which decides whether you have months to prepare or one day.
| Domestic turnover in a calendar year | You are a payer from | Provision |
|---|---|---|
| exceeds 2 000 000 Kč | 1 January of the following calendar year | § 6 odst. 1 |
| exceeds 2 536 500 Kč | the day after the day it was exceeded | § 6 odst. 2 písm. b) |
Source: zákon č. 235/2004 Sb., § 6 — “…je plátcem od prvního dne kalendářního roku bezprostředně následujícího po kalendářním roce, ve kterém její obrat v tuzemsku překročil částku 2000000 Kč” and “…po dni, kdy její obrat v tuzemsku překročil v příslušném kalendářním roce částku 2536500 Kč”.
Anyone who remembers only one of the two numbers remembers the lower one, and the higher one then catches them mid-year, invoicing as a payer without knowing it. There is a third route as well: under § 6 odst. 2 písm. a) you can opt to become a payer from the day after you cross 2 000 000 Kč, if you notify it.
Turnover is tracked across a calendar year — both paragraphs say so explicitly. Counting a rolling twelve months is counting under the older rule.
Identified person
A separate status that arises considerably earlier. It appears when you buy services from a VAT payer in another EU country, or supply services to one. An identified person does not become a full payer — it does not charge VAT on domestic transactions and has no right to deduct input VAT — but it does have to report cross-border transactions.
For a carrier working across Europe this status comes up noticeably more often than full registration.
VAT payer and the flat tax are incompatible
Registering for VAT automatically closes the flat-tax regime. If you are getting close to the threshold, next year’s decision about your tax regime should already take that into account — how that choice works out is in Paušální daň or the standard regime.
What changes on your invoices
You get a DIČ, the format of the invoice changes, and reporting with its own deadlines is added. International transport has its own rules for determining where a service is supplied, and those rules decide whose VAT applies and at what rate. This is the area where an accountant’s advice pays for itself fastest, simply because a first-quarter mistake here is expensive to undo.
How the rest of an OSVČ’s payments work is on Trade licence in Czechia.
