Czech Tax Heaven for Sportsmen

Abstract

There is no specific legal regulation of professional athletes in the Czech Republic. In practice, both individual players and team players are mostly self-employment. In case of team players, compared to the legal regulation in other European countries, it is quite unique. This article deals with the legal regulation of professional team players, especially in the area of taxation. It works with the hypothesis, stated in two judgments of the Supreme Administrative Court, that team players should tax their incomes by the personal incomes tax as self-employed persons, i.e. businessmen. In 2011, the Supreme Administrative Court stated that team players are not employees of their club and they should pay taxes as from independent activities. The Czech Financial Administration followed this decision and taxed these sportsmen as so called independent professions. The reason why this issue was reopened by the Supreme Administrative Court was the case of football player David Lafata, who got a business license (he became a businessman) as a footballer and claimed that playing football is not an independent profession, but real business. In both cases, the personal income tax base is created as the difference between income and expenditure. As mostly there are no real high expenditures, Czech legal regulation allows the lump sum expenses: in case of independent profession 40 %, but for business (in this very case) 60 %. The aim of the paper is to confirm or disprove the hypothesis stated above, analyzing existing legal regulation and case law, and offer solutions de lege ferenda.