Filing Your Czech s.r.o. Annual Accounts (2026): Approval, the Collection of Deeds and Penalties
Updated: 2026-08-07 · Tax year 2026. This guide is general and informational, not legal or tax advice. Confirm your company’s position with a Czech accountant.
Filing your Czech corporate income tax return does not discharge your accounting obligations. A Czech s.r.o. has two further duties that foreign owners routinely miss: the accounts must be approved by the general meeting, and they must then be published in the Collection of Deeds (sbírka listin) of the Commercial Register. For the 2025 calendar year, approval was due by 30 June 2026, publication within 30 days of that, and the absolute backstop is 31 December 2026.
This is a public filing. Anyone — a competitor, a supplier, a bank — can pull your company’s balance sheet for free at justice.cz.
The three deadlines
| Step | Filed with | Deadline for accounting year 2025 |
|---|---|---|
| Prepare the financial statements | internal; basis for the tax return | with the corporate income tax return |
| Approve the accounts | general meeting / sole shareholder | 30 June 2026 (6 months after the balance sheet date) |
| Publish in the Collection of Deeds | Registry Court | within 30 days of approval and no later than 12 months after the balance sheet date = 31 December 2026 |
The 12-month backstop applies whether or not the accounts were approved. If the shareholders never approved them, you still publish — with a note that approval did not take place. “The shareholder is abroad” is not a defence.
Note how this interacts with the tax calendar. If you use a registered tax adviser, the corporate income tax return for 2025 was due 1 July 2026 — one day after the approval deadline. Owners who plan the tax filing for the last possible day often end up approving the accounts late as a side effect. The deadlines for the return itself are covered in Czech s.r.o. tax filing deadlines for foreign owners.
What actually gets published
The scope depends on your size category. From accounting periods starting 1 January 2026, micro and small entities are also out of scope of the statutory audit.
Micro and small entities (not audited) — the vast majority of foreign-owned s.r.o.:
- balance sheet (abbreviated), and
- notes to the financial statements (abbreviated).
They do not have to publish the profit and loss account. This is the single most useful point in this article: your revenue, margin and cost structure stay out of the public file. Many owners assume the whole set goes public and file more than the law requires.
Medium and large entities:
- full balance sheet and profit and loss account,
- full notes, cash-flow statement and statement of changes in equity,
- the annual report and the auditor’s report where an audit applies.
The decision on distribution of profit or settlement of loss is filed too, unless it is already in the notes.
Approval: what a one-person s.r.o. actually needs
Under the Business Corporations Act, the managing director (jednatel) must convene a general meeting so that it deals with the ordinary financial statements within 6 months of the end of the previous accounting period.
If you are the sole shareholder, you do not convene a meeting at all — you exercise its powers yourself and approve the accounts by a written decision of the sole shareholder, signed and dated. In practice this document is very often never written, and then there is no evidence of approval when the Registry Court asks. Draft it, sign it, keep it.
If there are several shareholders and they are spread across countries, check whether the articles of association allow decisions per rollam — in writing or electronically, outside a meeting. Most modern Czech articles do. If yours do not, amending them requires a notary.
Three ways to file
- Data box straight to the Registry Court. The standard route. Documents go as PDF to the data box of the regional court that keeps your company’s file. No court fee. Include the company ID (IČO) and file reference.
- The justice.cz electronic filing desk. Works without a data box, but the submission needs a recognised electronic signature.
- Through the tax office. Since 2021, a business corporation can ask the tax administrator to pass the financial statements contained in the corporate income tax return on to the Registry Court. The request can only be made together with the tax return — it cannot be filed separately afterwards. The publication duty is treated as fulfilled the moment you file the return, not when the court actually files the documents.
Route 3 is the cheapest for a small s.r.o., because it turns two filings into one. It is also the route that quietly fails when a company changes accountants mid-year and nobody ticks the box. Before you assume you have filed, check the Collection of Deeds yourself — the register is public and searchable, as explained in how to check a Czech company.
What happens if you are late
Two authorities can act, and they act independently:
- Tax office — failure to publish is a breach of the Accounting Act, with a fine of up to 3% of net assets. For a company with CZK 10 million of assets that is up to CZK 300,000 in theory.
- Registry Court — a procedural fine of up to CZK 100,000, repeatable.
- Dissolution — if the accounts for two consecutive periods are missing and the company ignores the court’s calls to remedy it, the court may open proceedings to dissolve the company with liquidation.
In practice the court starts with a written call. For a non-resident owner the real risk is that the call goes to the company data box, nobody reads Czech, and the deadline in it passes unanswered. Set up data box notifications, or have your accountant monitor it.
If you missed 30 July
- Check the Collection of Deeds — the filing may already be there via the tax route.
- Produce the approval document if it is missing, dated to reflect what actually happened.
- File as soon as possible. Until 31 December 2026 you are late, not in breach of the absolute deadline.
- Catch up on older years too — two missing periods is what triggers dissolution proceedings.
Frequently asked questions
Our accounting period is not the calendar year. How do the deadlines shift?
They run from the balance sheet date, not from 31 December. A financial year ending 30 June 2026 means approval by 31 December 2026 and publication by 30 June 2027.
Can we redact the figures?
Personal data beyond what the law requires can be redacted; the accounting figures cannot. Publishing a blanked-out balance sheet does not discharge the duty.
We incorporated mid-year. Do we still file?
Yes, including for a short first period. If the company was formed in the last three months of a calendar year, the first accounting period may be joined to the following year and filed as one longer set.
Does this apply to a dormant company?
Yes. A company with no activity still prepares, approves and publishes accounts. Dormant companies are in fact the most common source of two consecutive missing filings.
Keep the compliance calendar off your desk
Preparing the statements in the right scope, drafting the shareholder approval and getting the documents into the Collection of Deeds on time is routine work — as long as somebody owns it. Our accounting services for Czech companies cover the full annual cycle, including catching up on missed filings before a court call turns into a fine. The wider tax picture for owners is set out in the Czech corporate tax guide.