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Trade license vs salary vs dividends

Three ways to get money out of your work, and what each one costs you.

Salary, trade license, DPP or an s.r.o.: which one leaves you the most money? In short: for most freelancers, the trade license.

  • Dividends: the s.r.o. first pays 21% corporate tax, then 15% tax on the dividend. And a company with a loss cannot pay dividends at all.
  • Salary: the employer pays about 34% on top of your gross salary, and you keep roughly three quarters of the gross. If you are your own boss, a net salary costs the company about 1.8 times as much.
  • DPP (dohoda o provedení práce): not real employment, for small or one-off jobs. Only 15% income tax is withheld, but you can earn at most 11,999 CZK a month per DPP. You can have several, with different employers.
  • Trade license: with revenue between 1 and 2 million CZK, tax, social and health insurance together come to about 13 to 14% of revenue, or about 10% without public health insurance. Above 2 million it rises, to about 30% at 5 million, and is still the cheapest option.

Calculate it yourself

Salary or trade license: what is left for you?

Enter what a company spends per month, or a gross salary. The calculator shows the net amount as an employee, on a DPP, on a trade license with 60/40 and with the flat-tax method, for 2026.

Open the salary calculator Trade license vs s.r.o. by revenue

Here is what is left of 1,000,000 CZK a year in 2026:

What you keep of 1,000,000 CZK · 2026

Trade license, flat-tax method

890,056 CZK · 89%

9,162 CZK a month, all in (band 1, up to 1.5M revenue). Only with public health insurance.

Trade license, 60/40 method

866,928 CZK · 87%

Tax 29,160 + social 64,240 + health 39,672 CZK. Without public health insurance: 906,600.

Dohoda (DPP)

850,000 CZK · 85%

15% tax, no insurance. Only up to 11,999 CZK a month per DPP, so 1M needs several.

s.r.o., all as dividends

702,340 CZK · 70%

21% corporate tax, then 15% on the dividends in your tax return (basic tax credit used). No salary.

Employee

579,384 CZK · 58%

The company pays 1,000,000: gross salary 747,372, then employee tax, social and health insurance.

Not included: other tax credits and deductions, real expenses, the 23% rate and running costs of an s.r.o. Your own numbers: salary calculator or costs by revenue.