Property tax return: due 31 January and who it catches

Real-estate tax is assessed on what you owned on 1 January. If anything about your ownership changed during the previous year, the return is due by 31 January, and most owners it catches are the ones who bought.

Deadline: 31 January

Return for the current tax period, filed once per financial office.

Open the rent-yield calculator

Who the deadline catches

The return follows a change of ownership or a change to the property itself, not the tax year in general. Four groups file.

You bought a property and the cadastre received the application during the previous year, which is the common case by far.
You acquired by inheritance, gift or exchange, where ownership passes on its own date rather than on the cadastre filing date.
You sold or gave away a property and still hold others under the same financial office, so the return removes the unit.
The property changed: an extension, a new building on your land, a change of use, a subdivision or a merger of plots.

Which year the acquisition lands in

The tax is assessed on the state of ownership at 1 January, so an acquisition is always first taxed in the following year. For a purchase, the date that counts is the day the cadastre received the application, not the day the record was made.

A purchase filed at the cadastre on 20 December makes you the owner as of 1 January, however late the record itself lands.
If the record is made only after the period started, the return is due at the end of the third calendar month following the month of the record.
Inheritance, gift and exchange run on the date ownership actually passed.

When you file nothing

The return is a one-off for each change. Once the tax office has your property on file it assesses the tax again every year on its own.

Nothing changed on your side: the office sends the assessment and you only pay.
The municipality changed a coefficient, or the inflation coefficient moved: the office recalculates and you do not file.
A partial return is enough when one item changed and the rest of your properties stayed the same.

Filing and paying

The return goes to the financial office of the region where the property is and covers every property you hold in that region. Two properties in two regions mean two returns.

One return per financial office, covering all of your properties in that region.
Sole traders and companies with a data box file electronically, and the tax portal pre-fills the form from the cadastre.
The assessed tax is due by 31 May. Above 5 000 CZK it splits into two instalments, 31 May and 30 November.

Common questions

I signed in December and the cadastre registered it in February. When is my return due?

Your ownership for tax purposes starts on the cadastre filing date, so the property is taxed from 1 January. Because the record was made only after the period had started, the return is due at the end of the third calendar month following the month of the record, which is the end of May for a February record.

I sold my only flat. Do I have to do anything?

You report the disposal so the office stops assessing the tax. If it was the only property you held under that financial office, a notice about the end of the tax liability is enough. If you still own others there, you file a return that leaves the sold unit out.

Flat, cellar and a parking space. One return or three?

One. A return covers every property you own in the region of a single financial office, with each unit, share of land and non-residential space as its own line.

Check what the unit actually returns

Property tax is one of the fixed costs of holding a unit. The rent-yield calculator puts it next to rent, running costs and the price you paid.