Subcontractors and helpers: when a “self-employed” helper is not enough

Three routes

Form	When it fits	What to watch out for
Employment relationship (pracovný pomer)	You need someone regularly and you direct their work	minimum wage, contributions, health and safety, holiday
Agreement on work outside an employment relationship (dohoda o práci mimo pracovného pomeru)	Occasional or smaller-scale help	statutory limits on the amount of work; this is still a labour-law relationship
Subcontracting from another sole trader	A self-contained part of the job that the supplier does independently	it must be a genuine business, not disguised employment

When subcontracting is really employment

Section 1(2) of the Labour Code (Zákonník práce) defines dependent work as work in a relationship of superiority and subordination, performed personally, according to the instructions and in the name of the employer. Section 1(3) says that such work may not be performed under a commercial-law or civil-law relationship — so not by invoicing under a trade licence (živnosť) either.

On a building site it looks like this in practice:

• Risky: the “helper” turns up at your site every morning, does what you tell them, with your tools, for a fixed daily rate, and works for nobody else.
• Fine: a tiler takes on the bathroom as a self-contained part, sets their own method and timing, brings their own tools, invoices for the finished result and also works for others.

What counts is the actual situation, not the name of the contract. More detail in the article Dependent work and in the interactive decision tree.

Fines

For illegal employment, the labour inspectorate (inšpektorát práce) can impose a fine from €4,000 to €200,000, and where two or more people are involved at the same time, at least €8,000 (Section 19(2)(a) of Act No. 125/2006 Coll.). On top of that, wages, tax and insurance contributions must be paid. For a craftsperson with one “self-employed helper”, this is a risk that can easily exceed the profit from the whole job.

Family members

Section 2a of Act No. 82/2005 Coll. allows, under precisely defined conditions, work by close relatives (a relative in the direct line, a sibling or a spouse) for a sole trader or an s.r.o. with at most two shareholders who are close relatives of each other. The conditions also depend on whether the helping person is insured, receives a pension or is a student. Check them in the current version of the Act before relying on the exception.

Pay and recruitment

• Minimum wage: €915 a month and €5.259 an hour in 2026; €972 and €5.586 from 1 January 2027.
• Recruitment from 7 June 2026: before the interview you must inform the applicant of the starting pay or its range, and you may not ask how much they earned before (Act No. 76/2026 Coll.).