The Czech Republic’s sickness insurance for self-employed
For freelancers (OSVC) in the Czech Republic, sickness insurance is a voluntary part of monthly social insurance contributions. The system aims to provide security through financial sickness insurance benefits to people with remunerative work.
Sickness insurance in the Czech Republic covers:
- Sickness pay
- Maternity financial assistance
- Paternal financial assistance
- Long-term care pay
Sickness insurance benefits are available only when meeting certain conditions. For one, you must fulfill all of the claim’s requirements either within the insurance period or the period of protection.
You can also only claim sickness pay or maternity assistance no longer than 7 days from the end of the insurance period. However, for maternity assistance, women can claim 180 days from the insurance period’s end. For men, it remains 7 days.
Read on for the benefits of sickness insurance for freelancers in the Czech Republic, starting first with sickness pay.
Sickness pay
How much sickness pay you can receive per calendar day varies as follows.
- From the 15th to 30th day of temporary incapacity or ordered quarantine: 60% of daily assessment base
- From the 21st to 60th day of temporary incapacity or ordered quarantine: 66% of daily assessment base
- From the 61st day of temporary incapacity or ordered quarantine - 72% of daily assessment base
Note: If the incapacity is due to a physical altercation which you were responsible for, the rate reduces to 50%.
Conditions for receiving sickness pay
In order to claim sickness pay in the Czech Republic, you must meet the following conditions.
- You have contributed to sickness insurance for at least 3 months prior to the incapacity.
- There has been no gainful self-employed business activities over the duration of incapacity (or quarantine).
- You have been incapacitated or quarantined for longer than 14 days.
If the freelancer meets these conditions, they can apply for sickness insurance pay through their health insurance provider.
Maternity and paternity assistance
For maternity and paternity financial assistance, you can claim 70% of your daily assessment base.
The conditions for maternity assistance in the Czech Republic include the following.
- The freelancer must have been contributing to sickness insurance for at least 270 days over the last 2 years.
- Out of the required 270 days payment, 180 days must fall within the last year.
- You cannot be practicing any gainful business activities over the duration of your incapacity.
For paternity financial assistance, the following conditions apply.
- The child must be no older than 7 years of age.
- You have paid sickness insurance for at least 3 months prior to the start of paternity leave.
- The claim is for no longer than a maximum of 2 weeks.
- The freelancer has not participated in any income-generating activity over the duration of the paternity leave.
Long-term care pay
If taking care of a person in need or an incurable person, long-term nursing pay covers 60% of your daily assessment base. Any official caretaker / nurse can claim nursing pay for up to 90 days.
The conditions for nursing pay include:
- The freelancer has paid sickness insurance for at least 3 months prior to the start of their incapacity.
- You have not made any income from business activities over the duration of the nursing pay.
Maximum sickness insurance benefits
The minimum assessment base for sickness insurance payments is CZK 8,000 per year (168 per month). Monthly deposits are 2.1% of the assessment base. Below is an example to help clarify.
- Say that you are required to pay CZK 819 in monthly deposits.
- CZK 819 = 2.1% of the total assessment base.
- The total assessment base in this case thus equals CZK 39 000.
Here, we can calculate how much you will end up paying for sickness insurance. To do this, we include the assessment base in the annual social insurance overview, which you submit with your tax report. This number reduces by the following rules:
- Under 1 345 CZK - 90% of the amount
- 1 345 - 2 017 CZK - 60% of the amount
- 2 017 - 4 033 CZK - 30% of the amount
- over 4 033 CZK - not taken into account
At this point, we can now calculate how much you will receive per day from sickness insurance. Let’s look at the final numbers.
The daily assessment base in this case is CZK 289. This means that you receive:
- Up to day 14 of sickness - 0 CZK.
- From day 15 - 30 (60%) - 174 CZK
- From day 60 (66%) - 191 CZK
- For day 61 onwards (72%) - 209 CZK
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