Czech Radio registers 191,000 new household fee payers after law change

Czech Radio has registered 191,000 new household fee payers as of August 24, representatives of the public service broadcaster announced during a meeting of the Senate's media committee.

Senators were inquiring about the impact of an amendment to the media law, effective since May of this year, which increased the fees and expanded the circle of those required to pay. In the Czech Republic, public service broadcasting is funded through mandatory fees paid by households and certain businesses.

The number of registered corporate payers now stands at approximately 17,500. "These are companies with 25 or more employees," stated Jan Menger, who represented the Director-General at the Senate hearing. "For legal entities, a transitional period was established from May 1 to June 30. During this time, payers already in our database had two months to inform us of their employee numbers, while still paying according to the old law," Menger explained.

Martin Vojslavský, Director of the Economic Section, noted that there is still a gap to close. "According to data from the Czech Statistical Office, there are between 23,000 and 25,000 companies that should be paying fees to Czech Radio," he said. "The exact figure is not known because the statistical office includes contract workers in its employee counts, whereas the law clearly refers only to the average number of core employees. However, I would say we have reached about 75 to 80% of the target," Vojslavský added.

In total, Czech Radio has nearly 600,000 legal entities on record, but the vast majority, around 573,000, are self-employed individuals who qualify for a zero-rate fee because they have fewer than 25 employees. While they are not required to pay, they must still be registered if they possess a radio receiver.

Czech Radio representatives reiterated that they do not intend to penalize these small, zero-rate business owners who have not yet registered. "The law states that we can issue a surcharge on the radio fee only when a subject is in arrears with a specific payment. Logically, individuals who are only registering with a zero rate cannot incur any debt because they do not pay any fee. We will not be focusing on this group. Our focus will, of course, be on large companies where the fee obligation exists," Vojslavský pointed out.

The broadcaster's fee department is still processing applications resulting from the media amendment. "Once we have processed this agenda, for which we have a schedule until the end of September, we will resume our standard processes. This means we will also begin outreach – we will return to contacting companies that have not yet paid and for which we have information about their employee numbers from secondary registers. We will, of course, contact them and politely ask if they have forgotten to fulfil their legal obligation," the economic director concluded.