You drive for Uber or Bolt, or deliver food for Wolt, and only now are you asking what happens at tax time? You are not alone. Plenty of drivers and couriers start out for the extra money and then discover that the app sends them nothing at the end of the year resembling the income certificate an employer would hand over. That is logical: to the Financial Administration you are a business, not an employee of the platform, and completely different rules apply than to a job. This article sums up what you need to know — from the trade licence and the expense percentage to the trap most drivers miss: VAT on the commission the platform charges you from abroad.
Taxi service or free trade? It depends what you carry
The first question to answer is whether you carry people or things. The answer decides which živnost — Czech trade licence — you need.
- Passenger rides (UberX, Bolt and the like) count in Czechia as a taxi service: the licensed trade "road motor transport" under the Trade Licensing Act, plus a separate taxi driver permit under Act No. 111/1994 Coll., on road transport. You are not legally allowed to drive without it, whatever a particular app may imply.
- Delivering food or parcels (Wolt, Foodora and similar) is treated differently: it is a free trade (typically "production, trade and services not listed in Annexes 1 to 3 of the Trade Licensing Act"), which the trade licensing office registers far more simply and quickly than a taxi concession.
Whether you carry people or parcels, both have one thing in common: the app finds you customers and takes a commission for doing so, but the service itself is provided by you as a business, not by the platform.
You are not a platform employee — the income falls under § 7
Uber, Bolt and Wolt are not your employer. You have no employment contract with them, they pay no social or health insurance for you, and they withhold no tax advances from your earnings. Under the Income Tax Act this is business income under § 7, exactly as for any other OSVČ (osoba samostatně výdělečně činná, the Czech term for a self-employed person). That means you keep your own records of income (and of expenses, if you claim them), you pay your own social and health insurance advances, and once a year you file a tax return.
The platforms usually give you a monthly summary of the amounts paid out, in the app or in their back office. That is a basis for your income records, but it does not replace a tax return and it does not pay anything on your behalf.
Flat-rate expenses: 60%, not 80%
If you would rather not keep records of real expenses (fuel, servicing, insurance, depreciation and so on), you can claim flat-rate expenses. For drivers and couriers the rate is 60% of income, both for the licensed taxi service and for the free delivery trade. The higher 80% rate is reserved for skilled crafts and agricultural production — driving and delivery are not among them, however similar they may look at first glance. The 60% rate applies up to an income ceiling of 2,000,000 CZK a year, so at most 1,200,000 CZK of expenses.
What you will pay in tax and advances in 2026
The personal income tax rate in 2026 is 15% up to a tax base of 1,762,812 CZK; above that threshold the rate is 23%. The basic taxpayer credit is 30,840 CZK a year and reduces the calculated tax in full even for someone who was in business for only part of the year — it is not reduced by months.
If this is your main activity, you also pay monthly social and health insurance advances. For 2026 the minimum social insurance advance is 5,005 CZK a month — that figure applies retroactively from January 2026 under amendment No. 90/2026 Coll., so if you actually paid the higher advance of 5,720 CZK from January to June, you have an overpayment that will be settled. The minimum health insurance advance is 3,306 CZK a month.
The alternative to the standard regime is paušální daň, the Czech flat tax, which merges the tax and both insurance advances into a single monthly payment and removes the duty to file a tax return. One of the conditions is that you are not registered for VAT — which connects directly to the trap described below. The monthly bands for 2026 are:
- Band 1 — 9,162 CZK (income up to 1,000,000 CZK a year; up to 1,500,000 CZK if at least 75% of your income comes from activities with a 60% or 80% flat-rate expense percentage — which is the case for drivers and couriers). This was also cut retroactively from the original 9,984 CZK, so an overpayment of 4,932 CZK arises for the first half of the year.
- Band 2 — 16,745 CZK (income up to 1,500,000 CZK a year).
- Band 3 — 27,139 CZK (income up to 2,000,000 CZK a year).
The full set of conditions and bands is in the flat tax for sole traders in 2026.
The trap almost everyone misses: VAT on the platform commission
This is where drivers get caught hardest, because nobody flags it. Uber, Bolt and Wolt take a commission from the rides or orders they pass to you — and they invoice that commission from abroad, usually from another EU country where the platform is based. By receiving such a service from a foreign person, even an ordinary sole trader who is not registered for VAT automatically becomes an identified person (identifikovaná osoba) under § 6h of the VAT Act.
In practice that means:
- Within 15 days of receiving the first such service you have to register as an identified person for VAT.
- On the commission received you have to declare and pay Czech VAT at 21% under the self-assessment mechanism (reverse charge) — and with no right to deduct, because this is an input for your business, not VAT on your own outputs.
- You file a VAT return only for the months in which the duty actually arose, by the 25th day of the following month.
- An identified person is not the same as a VAT payer: you charge no VAT on your domestic rides or deliveries to end customers and you continue to act as a non-registered trader towards them.
The self-assessment principle for foreign services is analysed in reverse charge on foreign services, and the full guide to registration and the duties of an identified person is in identified person for VAT — a guide.
DAC7: the tax office can see your platform income
Since the DAC7 directive came in, digital platforms have been obliged to report the income of their service providers to the tax authorities. For sales of goods there is an exemption for small sellers under 30 transactions and 2,000 EUR a year — but for personal services, which clearly cover both driving and delivery, that exemption does not apply and practically every payment made to you is reported. So the Financial Administration has your income from Uber, Bolt and Wolt on file and will sooner or later compare it with what you declared. Counting on nobody noticing makes no sense in this line of work.
What to do as income grows: watch the VAT turnover
Alongside VAT on the commission there is the ordinary turnover test for VAT registration from your own activity. If your total turnover for a calendar year exceeds 2,000,000 CZK, you become a VAT payer from 1 January of the following year (since 2025 turnover is tracked per calendar year, not over a rolling 12 months). If you were to cross 2,536,500 CZK, you become a payer the very next day. For drivers working full time across several platforms at once, that line can arrive sooner than expected — which is why it pays to track turnover as you go rather than checking a year late.
A practical sequence for a new driver or courier
- Decide whether you will carry passengers (taxi concession plus taxi driver permit) or deliver parcels and food (free trade), and register the trade licence.
- Register with the tax office for income tax, and notify your health insurance company and ČSSZ that you have started self-employment.
- Choose your regime: the standard route with 60% flat-rate expenses (or real costs), or the flat tax if one monthly payment and no tax return suits you better.
- As soon as you start paying commission to a platform abroad, register as an identified person for VAT within 15 days and watch which months bring a filing duty.
- Record income from each platform as you go, along with expense documents — fuel receipts above all — so that everything is together at year end.
How Taxorio helps
A driver's or courier's records tend to be fragmented: dozens to hundreds of small payments a month for fuel, car washing or minor servicing. In Taxorio you photograph the receipt on your phone: the AI reads it, recognises the Fuel category and offers the default business-use percentage from your settings, which you either confirm or adjust. If receipts have piled up over a whole month, you do not have to enter them one by one — upload the batch under Settings → Import data and Taxorio works through them and lays out a preview for you to check. The time saved goes where it is actually needed: watching your VAT turnover, or not missing the registration as an identified person.
In short
Working for Uber, Bolt or Wolt makes you a business, not an employee of the platform — with income under § 7, a 60% expense rate and the job of handling both insurance advances and income tax yourself. What surprises most drivers is the duty to register as an identified person for VAT because of the foreign commission the platform deducts, and the fact that the Financial Administration sees their income through DAC7 reports as a matter of course. Stay on top of both from the first month and you spare yourself an unpleasant catch-up and penalties a year later.
Taxorio scope: Taxorio provides invoicing and income/expense records for Czech sole traders. It is not full accounting or personalised tax advice. For an unsupported or unusual case, verify the treatment with a Czech accountant or tax adviser before filing.