[Czech Republic] Compulsory Share and Changes Effective from 2025

Fulfilling the Compulsory Share is one of the first tasks in the annual payroll agenda that employers must complete. The deadline for submitting the Compulsory Share report—and, where applicable, for making the payment to the state budget—is always 15 February of the following year.

What Is the Compulsory Share?

The Employment Act requires employers to ensure that at least 4% of their total workforce consists of people with disabilities, that is, individuals recognized as having a disability of degree I, II, or III. Employees with a degree III disability count twice toward this share.

Naturally, it is not always possible to meet this requirement solely by direct employment, so the law provides two alternative ways to comply:

1. Purchasing goods and services from employers that hire more than 50% of people with disabilities.
2. Making a financial contribution to the state budget.

All three methods—employment, purchasing goods or services, and financial contributions—may be combined in any proportion.
For example, if a payroll accountant needs to account for three persons with disabilities (in a company employing 75 staff) but only one such employee is on record, the remaining two can be substituted by either purchasing goods or services, by making a payment to the state budget, or by a combination of both (e.g., one through purchases and one through payment).

When referring to the number of employees, the law uses the “full-time equivalent” (FTE) count. In simplified terms, this reflects the ratio of hours worked to the total hours of a full-time position. For instance, an employee working half of a standard full-time schedule is counted as 0.5 FTE.
Certain non-working hours—such as vacation, sick leave, or caregiving leave—are also included in the calculation of hours worked.

What Has Changed as of 2025?

The key change concerns the calculation of the amount payable to the state budget. Until now, the calculation involved determining the number of persons with disabilities required to meet the 4% Compulsory Share, deducting the full-time equivalent based on purchased goods or services, and multiplying the remainder by the average national wage for the first to third quarters of the calendar year, further multiplied by a fixed coefficient of 2.5.

Starting with the 2025 reporting period, the coefficient applied to the average wage will now depend on the actual proportion of employees with disabilities in the workforce. The aim is to reward employers who, even if they do not reach the full 4% Compulsory Share, employ a substantial proportion of people with disabilities, and conversely, to encourage those employing very few such individuals to improve.

The new coefficients are as follows:

• Coefficient 1 – if the employer hires at least 3% of persons with disabilities.
• Coefficient 2 – if the employer hires at least 1% of persons with disabilities.
• Coefficient 3.5 – if the employer hires less than 1% of persons with disabilities.

Another change is that employers providing substitute performance under the Compulsory Share can now offer such substitute performance only up to 14 times the average national wage for the first to third quarters of the preceding calendar year for each full-time equivalent employee with a disability employed in the previous calendar year. Previously, it was possible to provide up to 28 times the average wage.