Mortgage for OSVČ in Czechia 2026: Turnover, Not Tax Return

It is a situation almost every OSVČ (self-employed sole trader) in Czechia knows. Turnover is decent, the work keeps coming, money lands in the account. Then you walk into a bank for a mortgage and hear that your income does not cover even half of what you need.

The problem is not you, it is the paperwork. A self-employed person reduces the tax base perfectly legally: paušální výdaje (flat-rate expenses) of 40, 60 or 80 percent, or the paušální daň regime, where there is no tax return at all. The result is that the document the bank treats as proof of income shows a figure nobody could live on.

Banks know this. Some of them have a separate calculation for the self-employed, based on turnover rather than profit. The catch is that not a single large bank publishes on its website what share of turnover it credits. Czech sources quote anything from 5 to 70 percent, and in English there is barely a coherent explanation to be found.

Below is what we were able to establish from the banks' current methodologies.

Three ways a bank works out a self-employed applicant's income

There is no single rule; every bank has its own logic. But every approach comes down to one of three.

From the tax base. The simplest and the least favourable: the bank takes the line from your tax return and calls it your income. If you claim paušální výdaje of 60 percent, the bank sees 40 percent of your turnover, and then deducts tax on top of that.

From turnover and type of activity. The bank looks at your turnover and your activity code, then applies its own formula to decide what share of that turnover counts as your income. This is the method that rescues the self-employed most often.

From the money moving through the account. The bank asks for 6–12 months of statements and assesses the incoming payments. That is how it handles people on the paušální daň regime, who have no tax return to show.

The turnover method: how it actually works

Take Raiffeisenbank as an example. Its methodology for partners is published openly, together with the calculation file, so it can be checked line by line.

The logic runs as follows. The bank works out your income two ways at once, from the tax base and from turnover adjusted for the type of activity, and takes the higher result. It then compares that figure with the income you declared yourself in the application form and takes the lower of those two.

The first half has an important consequence: the turnover method cannot leave you worse off. If the tax return produces more, the bank uses the tax return. It raises the floor rather than replacing the calculation.

The second half matters just as much: do not understate your income in the application form. If you write down less than the calculation produces, the bank takes your figure.

How much they actually credit

This is where the open sources run out. Raiffeisenbank's share of turnover is not fixed; it follows a curve, and the percentage falls as turnover rises. The logic is obvious: the bigger the turnover, the more costs are buried in it.

The bank splits every type of activity into two groups by CZ-NACE code (the Czech classification of economic activities), and the register holds almost twelve hundred codes. Loosely speaking, the split is between “intellectual services” and everything else.

The key case: intellectual services on paušální výdaje of 40 or 60 percent are credited with a flat 70.25 percent of turnover, with no formula at all, just the one number. That is the ceiling of what is achievable at this bank. Programmers, consultants, translators and designers land exactly here.

For every other type of activity the share comes off the curve, and at a turnover of around one million Kč a year it works out noticeably lower.

Three limits that usually go unmentioned

The percentage of turnover is not yet the sum the bank will recognise as income. Three things are layered on top, one after another:

• tax is deducted from the resulting amount;
• what is left is capped at 150,000 Kč per month for each applicant;
• the final figure is compared with the income declared in the application form, and the lower one wins.

Which is why the line “the bank will credit 70 percent of your turnover”, stated without those caveats, is misleading.

If you are on paušální daň

The paušální daň regime is convenient in everyday life and awkward at the bank: there is no tax return, so there is nothing to show. Some banks work with these clients anyway, but on their own terms.

Raiffeisenbank's requirements are: at least 12 months of activity, six bank statements and an annual turnover of 250,000 Kč or more. And the calculation does not use your real turnover but a fixed value, with the bank plugging in its own number depending on which band you fall into.

A separate trap awaits anyone on paušální výdaje of 80 percent, meaning skilled trades and agriculture. They do not qualify for the favourable branch of the calculation, and their share of turnover comes out roughly half that of intellectual services. On the same turnover, the difference is several-fold.

Komerční banka does it differently

It is worth understanding that “a percentage of turnover” is not a market-wide rule.

With a standard tax return, Komerční banka does not calculate a percentage of turnover at all. It does something else: it recalculates your flat-rate expenses downwards using its own table of CZ-NACE codes. So if you claimed a paušál of 60 percent, the bank may conclude that real costs in your line of work are closer to 30, and lift the tax base from 40 to 70 percent of turnover. The income used for the calculation ends up roughly one and a half times higher.

This bank has a turnover method only for the paušální daň regime, and there it is a fallback, meant for people who do not bank with it.

The practical takeaway: different banks will read the same tax return differently, and the difference can decide whether you get the loan at all. A refusal at one bank does not mean a refusal everywhere.

The trap that catches even the advisers

Banks' marketing materials sometimes carry a phrase like “turnover mortgage — 80 percent”. It is easy to read that as the share of turnover credited towards income.

It is not a share of turnover but the maximum LTV (loan-to-value), meaning how much of the property price the bank is willing to cover with the loan. Those 80 percent have nothing to do with the income calculation. Confusing the two is the single most common mistake in conversations about mortgages for the self-employed.

What to prepare in advance

• At least 12 months of trading history. With less, almost no bank will even start the conversation.
• Statements covering 6–12 months. Required on paušální daň, and often with a standard tax return too.
• Your activity code. Check which CZ-NACE you are registered under: the group decides your share of turnover. If what you actually do is intellectual services but the code says something else, sort it out beforehand.
• An honest income figure in the application form. An understated amount will cut the calculation short.
• Applications to several banks. Since the methodologies diverge, the gap in approved amounts between banks can be substantial.

Run the numbers before you talk to the bank

You can estimate the order of magnitude yourself: our property section has a calculator that works out the monthly payment and the maximum loan amount from your income, allowing for the rule that the payment should normally not swallow more than 45 percent of net income.

Keep the main point in mind: for a self-employed applicant, “income” in this calculation is neither what landed in the account nor the line in the tax return, but the figure a particular bank arrives at using its own methodology.

Rates as of August 2026

The average rate offered on the market is 5.42 percent (Swiss Life Hypoindex, August 2026) — the fifth monthly rise in a row and the highest since August 2024. On contracts actually signed the average is lower, 4.90 percent (CBA Hypomonitor, July 2026); the gap is essentially what a client wins by negotiating.

Affordability, meanwhile, is tested at a rate two percentage points higher. What you need to earn for a property at a given price is set out with a table in a separate article.

This article is for information only and does not replace professional advice. Bank terms change: the rules described here reflect the methodologies in force as of August 2026.

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