Self-Employment in Retirement

As an old-age pensioner, you can run a business with no restriction on age or on how much you earn. If you receive your old-age pension in full, working income does not reduce or limit it in any way — unlike in some other countries, Czechia does not tax old-age pensioners' earnings at a special rate or reduce the pension because of extra income.

For a pensioner, a trade licence always counts as secondary self-employed activity, regardless of whether it is your only income or just extra income alongside your pension. This classification follows directly from the Pension Insurance Act (Act No. 155/1995 Coll.) — you simply indicate it as part of the trade notification on the Single Registration Form (JRF), or directly with OSSZ (district social security office).

The same rule applies to disability pension of category 1, 2 or 3 — this too establishes entitlement to secondary activity regardless of how much you earn.

Running a business alongside your pension has three main advantages compared with an ordinary main activity:

• Social insurance only above the decisive amount. Up to an annual profit of 117,521 Kč (2026) you pay no social insurance at all. Above this threshold you pay contributions on your actual profit, and the minimum secondary-activity advance payment is 1,574 Kč per month.
• Health insurance with no minimum assessment base. You do not pay monthly advance payments in advance based on the minimum, the way a main-activity self-employed person (OSVČ) does (3,306 Kč). You settle the 13.5 % contribution on your actual profit only after filing the annual income and expenses statement (přehled).
• The basic taxpayer credit also applies to pensioners. You deduct it, worth 30,840 Kč per year (2026), just like any other taxpayer — the former restriction for old-age pension recipients was removed from the law long ago.

If, in addition, you continue working while receiving your old-age pension in full, you are entitled, from 2025, to the social insurance discount for working pensioners (6.5 %) — thanks to it, as a self-employed person (OSVČ) you pay only 22.7 % in social insurance instead of 29.2 %. You claim it retroactively on the annual statement (přehled) with OSSZ (district social security office), and it applies only to the months in which you actually pay contributions — for a secondary activity, that means only above the decisive amount. The earlier increase of 0.4 % of the calculation base for every 360 days worked was abolished on 1. 1. 2025 and replaced by this discount. You can find an overview of income tax on the portal of the Tax Administration (Finanční správa), and the insurance conditions on the website of ČSSZ (Czech Social Security Administration).