If you are coming from another EU country, you are not required to obtain a work permit to teach English in the Czech Republic. However, we do recommend obtaining a business license – known locally as a Zivnostensky List. This license will enable you to legally set up shop here as a freelancer and means that you can freely begin teaching English to companies and individuals who will more than often want to be issued with a receipt for money paid to you for your lessons. You can teach privately without getting the license, but this means that you will be limiting your market and will essentially be working illegally.
When teaching for a private language school, you can expect to be taxed around 15-20% on what you earn and if teaching on a business license, you only begin paying tax after a certain amount and you can also deduct costs from your earnings.
For non-EU citizens coming to teach, the Czech Republic is a part of the Schengen group of countries and you will receive an initial 90-day tourist visa which becomes active from your first day of arrival. This is more than enough time to then find teaching work and get your work visa processed. Again, we also recommend applying for a Zivnostensky List.
At tefl online pro we help all of our graduates with visa-related info, so if you are a graduate of our international TEFL certification program and need more information on this then you know that you are very welcome to reach out to us and we will help you through the process.
It is also worth mentioning here that while it is possible to take an Onsite TEFL course in Prague before you start the hunt for work, we don’t recommend this path. You will need the full three months to arrange your work permit, and by taking an onsite course in the city, you eat into the first month of your 90-day limit. Yes, we do run Online and Combined international TEFL courses and yes, we are biased in the online versus onsite TEFL debate, but it logically stands to reason that in the first few months of your arrival that you will need all the free time you can lay your future teaching English hands on to get all your ducks in a row.