- You file a zero corporate income tax return every year, even if the company had not a single crown of income. The exemption under § 38mb of the Income Tax Act does not cover an ordinary dormant s.r.o. (§ 38mb of Act No. 586/1992 Coll.).
- You must publish the financial statements in the collection of deeds (sbírka listin) within 12 months of the balance-sheet date — whether or not the company issued a single invoice (§ 21a of the Accounting Act).
- If you file no return at all, the penalty is always at least CZK 500, even when the calculated tax is zero (§ 250(4) of the Tax Code).
- If statements are missing for 2 consecutive accounting periods, the registry court can start proceedings to dissolve the company once an unanswered notice period has passed (§ 105a of the Public Registers Act).
Responsibility for this page rests with Artem Chagin, founder of Ganado International s.r.o., company ID 19322119 (ARES registry entry). It is general information as of the update date, not tax advice on your specific case.
A dormant s.r.o.'s obligations — what you must file every year
This is the complete list of what a dormant, non-VAT-registered s.r.o. must do every year — nothing more, but nothing less either. The order follows how these obligations arrive during the year.
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Zero corporate income tax return
The return is filed even with a zero tax base. § 38mb names four groups that need not file: a public-benefit taxpayer and a unit-owner association (both only where all their income is outside the tax base, exempt, or taxed at source), a veřejná obchodní společnost (general partnership), and a company being dissolved or divided, for the period from the transformation's decisive date until the transformation is entered in the commercial register. An ordinary s.r.o. with no revenue is in none of them. The basic deadline is 3 months; it extends to 4 months where the return was not filed within 3 months and is then filed electronically — the normal case for an s.r.o., which has a data box by law. With a tax advisor or a mandatory audit the deadline is 6 months.
Source: Act No. 586/1992 Coll., Income Tax Act, § 38mb
Source: Act No. 280/2009 Coll., Tax Code, § 136 (filing deadlines)
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Publishing the financial statements in the collection of deeds
The financial statements must be filed even for a year with not a single transaction, and whether or not the general meeting approved them. A micro or small accounting unit without a mandatory audit — the typical dormant s.r.o. — need not publish the profit-and-loss statement at all, but the balance sheet and the notes are still required.
Source: Act No. 563/1991 Coll., Accounting Act, § 21a (paras 2, 4 and 9)
Source: Act No. 563/1991 Coll., Accounting Act, § 1b (micro and small units)
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Watching the data box
An s.r.o.'s data box exists by law regardless of activity and cannot be switched off just because the company isn't trading. Delivery into it has the same legal effect as registered mail, including deadlines starting to run — a registry court's notice or a penalty assessment arrives there whether or not you log in.
Source: Act No. 300/2008 Coll., on Electronic Acts and Authorized Document Conversion
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VAT and control statements, if the company is VAT-registered
If a dormant company stays VAT-registered, it keeps filing VAT returns for every period, even zero ones, and as a legal entity also control statements (kontrolní hlášení). Ongoing zero output is what can end that registration: the tax administrator cancels it, ex officio or on request, once the payer has stopped carrying out economic activity in the Czech Republic (§ 106(1)), and ex officio where the payer made no supplies counting toward domestic turnover in the preceding calendar year and made none up to the day before the cancellation proceedings begin (§ 106(2)).
Source: Act No. 235/2004 Coll., VAT Act, § 106 (cancellation of registration)
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Director's pay — only if you decide to start paying it
As long as the director (jednatel) takes no pay for the role, the company registers as an employer nowhere and pays no contributions. That is a normal, lawful state for a dormant company — holding the director role is not itself employment.
A dormant s.r.o. is a micro accounting unit — and what follows from that
§ 1b of the Accounting Act sets the size of an accounting unit from three values at the balance-sheet date. A unit is micro if it does not exceed at least 2 of the 3 micro values; it is small if it is not micro and does not exceed at least 2 of the 3 small values. A dormant company typically exceeds none of them.
| Threshold value | Micro unit | Small unit |
|---|---|---|
| Total assets | 11,000,000 CZK | 120,000,000 CZK |
| Net turnover for the accounting period | 22,000,000 CZK | 240,000,000 CZK |
| Average number of employees | 10 | 50 |
What this means for a dormant company: a micro or small unit without a mandatory audit need not publish the profit-and-loss statement at all unless other legislation requires it, but still files the balance sheet and the notes in the collection of deeds (§ 21a(9) of the Accounting Act). The publication duty shrinks; it does not disappear.
Dormant s.r.o. deadlines for the 2026 period — the actual dates
A company whose accounting period is the calendar year has these deadlines for 2026. A period counted in months starts the day after the period ends and finishes on the numerically matching day; if that last day is a Saturday, Sunday or public holiday, it moves to the next working day (§ 33 of the Tax Code).
| Obligation | Statutory deadline | Date for the 2026 period |
|---|---|---|
| Corporate income tax return — basic deadline | within 3 months of the end of the tax period | 1 April 2027 (Thursday) |
| Tax return filed electronically | within 4 months, where it was not filed within 3 months and is then filed electronically | 1 May 2027 is a Saturday, so the deadline moves to Monday 3 May 2027 |
| Tax return via a tax advisor or with a mandatory audit | within 6 months of the end of the tax period | 1 July 2027 (Thursday) |
| Publishing the statements in the collection of deeds | within 12 months of the balance-sheet date | 31 December 2027 (Friday) |
The filing deadlines come from § 136 of the Tax Code and are restated in the same terms by Finanční správa's corporate income tax overview; the publication deadline from § 21a of the Accounting Act. For a dormant s.r.o. the electronic date is the one that matters in practice — the company has a data box by law, so it files electronically anyway. If your accounting period is not the calendar year, the same counting runs from your own balance-sheet date.
Keep it dormant, liquidate it, or sell it?
A dormant company is never free to run — the accounting and the filings keep going. Find your row and decide whether keeping it makes sense:
| Your situation | What it means |
|---|---|
| The company is clean (no debts), you plan to use it again within 1–2 years | Keeping it at 1,990 CZK a month makes sense if you will use the company again within 1–2 years: you keep the company ID, tax ID, banking history and registrations a new company would have to earn again. |
| The company carries debt or unresolved liabilities | Liquidation requires settling liabilities before the company is struck off, and it is a separate legal proceeding we do not run ourselves — we'll discuss your case and point you to who handles it. |
| You no longer want the company and it has no value to you | Voluntary liquidation ends the ongoing filing and statement obligations at once — without it, they continue indefinitely, even if the company never earns another crown. |
| You have a buyer for the company with its existing ID and history | Selling the ownership stake is an alternative to liquidation, but a buyer will also look at your compliance record — filed statements and no debts make a company sellable; a neglected dormant one does not. |
| You're unsure whether you'll continue and just want to avoid neglecting anything | That is exactly the case the dormant-company tier is for — you meet the minimum, nothing extra, and you can postpone the decision without risking a penalty or court dissolution. |
This is a general comparison, not a legal assessment of your specific situation. We'll talk through liquidation or a sale with you, but we do not carry out the liquidation proceeding itself.
What you send, what we do, when it's done
Setting up a dormant company is a short, one-off job. After that, we confirm once a year that nothing has changed.
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What you send
The company ID, the last processed accounting period (if any), and whether the company is VAT-registered. If a registry court notice or a penalty assessment arrived in the data box, forward that too.
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What we do
We check whether prior years' statements are in the collection of deeds and whether any returns are unfiled. We fill any gaps and set up the ordinary annual cycle: return, statements, publication.
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When it's done
You get a written reply with scope and price, usually within 1 business day. If a specific deadline or notice is already running against the company, we say so in that first reply.
Written reply, no call — usually within 1 business day.
Where the dormant tier sits in the whole s.r.o. price list
The dormant company is the lowest tier we publish. The whole ladder is right here, so you can see what happens to the price once the company starts invoicing again — no call, no form, no PDF download.
| Tier | Price | Who it is for |
|---|---|---|
| Low-activity s.r.o. | from 1,990 CZK / month | A non-VAT company with minimal activity and a small, clean document flow. |
| Small active s.r.o. | from 3,490 CZK / month | A company with a manageable monthly document flow and straightforward bookkeeping. |
| Standard s.r.o. | from 5,990 CZK / month | Regular bookkeeping, bank and document control and ongoing communication. |
| VAT s.r.o. with regular agenda | Individual quote | Bookkeeping, VAT returns, control statements and a recurring monthly workflow. |
| Larger or more complex agenda | Individual quote | More accounts, documents or employees, or recurring review of books maintained by your team. |
| Accounting takeover | free | The handover is free: we check the state of the books, open items and set up your new monthly routine. Unprocessed historical periods and missing documents are quoted separately once we have reviewed them. |
Every rate except the accounting takeover is monthly; the takeover is a one-off. The tier follows the scope of work — VAT, payroll, bank accounts and document volume — and we confirm your exact figure in writing before we start. Annual statements and the tax return are included in the monthly fee for ongoing work, so for a dormant company nothing is added to 1,990 CZK a month over the year.
What is billed separately
The 1,990 CZK-a-month price covers a dormant company with no VAT registration, no employees and no unprocessed prior periods. These items are not included:
| Director or employee pay | from 490 CZK per person per month | Once the director starts taking pay or the company takes on its first employee, it is no longer purely dormant work. |
|---|---|---|
| Payroll setup at the first payment | from 990 CZK | A one-off registration with social security and the health insurer, and setting up the process. |
| Accounting takeover from another provider | free | Reviewing the books, filling gaps in the records, and setting up ongoing management. Unprocessed historical periods are quoted once we have reviewed them. |
| Unprocessed prior periods and amended returns | priced by scope, confirmed before we start | Companies that were only informally "dormant" and filed nothing for years usually need more than one year of catch-up. |
The annual financial statements and the zero corporate income tax return are included in the management fee — that is exactly what a dormant company needs each year, and we do not bill it separately.
What a year of dormant s.r.o. accounting costs
An example for a non-VAT-registered s.r.o. with no employees and no unprocessed prior periods — the typical dormant company:
| Accounting management: 1,990 CZK × 12 months | 23,880 CZK |
|---|---|
| Zero corporate income tax return | 0 CZK — included in the management fee |
| Financial statements and publication in the collection of deeds | 0 CZK — included in the management fee |
| Total for the year | 23,880 CZK |
Nothing else is billed for a purely dormant company. Once the company earns revenue, hires, or becomes VAT-registered, the rate changes with the scope of work — see the s.r.o. accounting price page for the full table.
What happens if you skip the zero return or the statements
A late return carries a penalty of 0.05% of the assessed tax per day of delay after the first 5 business days, capped at 5% of the tax and CZK 300,000 overall; a penalty below CZK 1,000 is not assessed (§ 250(1)–(3) of the Tax Code). For a dormant company with a zero tax base, that calculation comes to CZK 0 — but if no return is ever filed, even after the tax office's own request, the upper-bound calculation applies and the penalty is always at least CZK 500 (§ 250(4) of the Tax Code). Zero tax does not mean a zero penalty for not filing.
Unpublished financial statements are handled separately from the tax penalty, by the registry court. If a company ignores a notice to submit its statements, an administrative fine of up to CZK 100,000 applies (§ 104 of Act No. 304/2013 Coll.). If statements are missing for at least 2 consecutive accounting periods, the registry court gives the company 1 month from delivery of its notice to file them; if the company doesn't, or the notice can't be delivered, the registry court may open proceedings to dissolve the company on its own initiative (§ 105a of Act No. 304/2013 Coll.). It then dissolves the company with liquidation as a rule — without liquidation only where the assets do not cover even the cost of liquidating and third-party rights are not substantially affected.
For an owner, this means in practice: "the company isn't doing anything" protects you from tax, not from the duty to file a return and publish statements. Both obligations keep running regardless of turnover, and neglecting them can end in the company's court-ordered dissolution, not just a fine.
When liquidation or a sale makes more sense than staying dormant
Keeping a company dormant makes sense when you expect to use it again — a fresh registration, a new company ID and a new history with the bank and the tax office usually cost more time than a few years of minimal upkeep.
Liquidation or a sale make more sense when the company has no further use to you, carries liabilities that won't resolve themselves, or when even the minimal upkeep cost stops making economic sense against what you'd otherwise get from it.
We'll talk through liquidation with you and point you to the next step, but we do not run the liquidation proceeding itself as a service. Send us the company's current state and we'll say whether minimal management or a conversation about liquidation or a sale fits better.
VERIFIED
Sources (verified 2026-09-20)
These links go to the primary sources — the statute text and its professional commentary — that we reviewed while preparing this page, as of the verification date in the heading above. Deadlines and amounts change over time, so check the current wording before deciding on your specific case.
- Act No. 586/1992 Coll., Income Tax Act, § 38mb (exceptions to the filing obligation)
- Act No. 563/1991 Coll., Accounting Act, § 1b (micro and small units) and § 21a (publishing the financial statements)
- Act No. 280/2009 Coll., Tax Code, § 33 (counting deadlines), § 136 (filing deadlines) and § 250 (penalty for late tax filing)
- Finanční správa — corporate income tax, general information (the 3, 4 and 6 month deadlines)
- Act No. 304/2013 Coll., on Public Registers of Legal Entities and Natural Persons, § 104 and § 105a (dissolving a corporation for unpublished statements)
- Tax Code — full text of § 250 with the penalty calculation (Měšec.cz)
- § 38mb Income Tax Act — commentary on filing exceptions (du.cz)
- On the possibility of dissolving a corporation for failing to file financial records (epravo.cz)