[Czech Republic] Payroll accountant, childcare workers and health insurance

Compared to other countries, the Czech Republic is one of the countries where an employee takes care of his/her child for a relatively long period of time. The standard length of care for a child in the subconscious of Czech society is 3 years, i.e. up to 3 years of age of the child. Recently, however, this period is being extended, with the employee asking to be released from work even after his/her child’s 3^rd birthday. In this article, we will look more closely at this situation in connection with health insurance.

As already mentioned, the employee (usually the child’s mother) is entitled to time off work until the child is 3 years old. During this time, she takes so-called parental leave. The employer must hold the employee’s job during this time so that the employee can perform the work according to the employment contract when he/she returns. What about health insurance? According to the law, health insurance must be paid every month for each person with permanent residence in the Czech Republic. However, an employee on parental leave has no income from which health insurance can be paid. Therefore, these persons have been classified as state insured persons. Thus, anyone who is on maternity leave or on parental leave is a state insured person and the government pays the health insurance for them.

Payroll and health insurance

But what if a person wants to care for a child after his/her 3^rd birthday? It is always essential to ask the employer for unpaid leave, which may or may not be granted. In terms of health insurance, there are two basic options:

• The person continues to receive parental allowance because he/she has opted for a longer period of parental allowance. In this case, the employee is still considered to be a state insured person. However, the payroll accountant must find out this fact from the employee and obtain an affidavit from the employee about receiving parental allowance. Without this affidavit, the employer will then unnecessarily pay health insurance for the employee and then claim the premiums paid from the employee.
• The person provides full-time and proper care for at least one child under 7 years of age or 2 children under 15 years of age. To qualify, the preschool child must not be placed in a nursery or kindergarten for more than 4 hours a day. However, only one person (mother or father) can fall into this category. It is also necessary to distinguish whether the employee has income from employment or self-employment. If he/she has such income, he/she is not a state insured person, so the government does not pay the health insurance for him/her. However, according to the law, even in such a case, the employer does not have to apply the minimum assessment base either and thus does not have to pay the health insurance for the

Even in the case of point 2, the employee must inform the employer by affidavit what his/her situation is. It is also important to distinguish whether the employee has or does not have income, because according to this information the payroll accountant notifies the health insurance office whether the employee is a state insured person or not. If the employee was a state insured person and the health insurance company did not know this, it would be losing money from the government unnecessarily. In the reverse situation, the government would pay excessive premiums to the health insurance office.

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