I recently went through the process of setting up a company in the Czech Republic and since I found that most guides online are quite poor and/or outdated I decided to write about how I did it since I’ve done a lot of research to figure out the simplest way possible.

Your options

You have three ways you can set up a company. Firstly is the most traditional way which is having your lawyer do it for you. While this is a great option for more complex business with many partners, etc. it is also the most expensive option. If you choose to go with this option then stop reading and email your lawyer, they will guide you through the rest. This will typically cost around 25k for a standard company with one owner and increases from there based on the complexity

An alternative if you don’t want to go through a lawyer or your business is simpler, but you still don’t want to run around all the places yourself are companies that can start your company for you. These will run you 15k.

Lastly, there is the way I went with. Do everything yourself. This I would recommend for anyone with a two to three days of free time looking to save on expenses. I personally spent about 8k on this overall, but you could bring it down to a little over 7k if you aren’t pressed for time like I was. In the rest of this post, I’ll describe how I went about doing this and hopefully, it will sound much easier than the many articles I found online which made it seem quite intimidating.

Setting up the company yourself

Setting up a company yourself can be broken down into three phases. If you’ve decided on a name and what you’ll do then you’re already basically done with phase 1. Remember to look it up on Justice.cz and make sure there is nothing with a very similar name since that wouldn’t be allowed.

The second phase can be done in one or two steps depending on your mood. You either just contact a notary and go to your first meeting or go to the post office and then meet your notary. Either way, you will need all the basics like criminal history and proof your company has permission to operate in its HQ.

The criminal history is simple to understand for anyone who is Czech, but how does the company base work? Well, there are two options. If you own the land on which you are setting your company headquarters then you just need to write that you are given the company permission and then bring proof of ownership of the land. If someone else owns the land you need their written permission to base the HQ there and proof they own it.

Now that you have the two or if you’re just going to have the notary get them for you its time to create the company. This is basically half-hour at a notary where you sign a bunch of papers and by the end, you are walking away with a company. Now technically that company can’t conduct bossiness till you complete phase 3, but nevertheless, you now have an actual company.

Phase 3 starts by dropping by any bank and pay down the funding capital of the company. Next, go to your local council and get a “živnostenský list”. Once you have all of this go back to your notary and they will register you in the official databases.

That’s it. This seemingly daunting process of setting up a company yourself broken down into 3 simple phases. I still highly recommend you do some extra research just so you understand things better and seek proper advice from a licensed professional, which I am not, but nevertheless, this is how easy it can be to set your company up. Just let the notaries do almost all the work at almost no cost compared to a lawyer.