Dílčí novela stávajícího zákona o účetnictví v připomínkovém řízení

The Ministry of Finance has published a draft amendment to the existing Accounting Act, primarily focusing on adjustments to ESG reporting requirements.

The proposed amendment to the Accounting Act, with an envisaged effective date of 1 January 2027, implements the latest European Union sustainability legislation, with the aim of reducing the administrative burden associated with ESG reporting.

The most significant change concerns the revision of the criteria triggering the obligation to prepare a sustainability report. Under the proposal, this obligation would newly apply to companies and groups that simultaneously exceed a turnover of approximately CZK 10.9 billion and have more than 1,000 employees. Although the scope of entities subject to mandatory sustainability reporting is narrowed, the obligation would no longer be limited to public-interest entities only. Instead, it would extend to all accounting entities that cumulatively exceed both thresholds and that take the form of a commercial company, savings or credit cooperative, or insurance company.

The draft amendment further specifies the definition of the value chain, introduces exemptions from the obligation to prepare a sustainability report for issuers of investment securities admitted to trading on an EU regulated market, and strengthens the protection of sensitive information relating both to accounting entities and to persons within their value chain, regardless of whether such persons themselves are subject to sustainability reporting obligations.

A change with a practical impact on big accounting entities is the transposition of the obligation to publish a consolidated sustainability report of a third-country parent undertaking. This obligation would apply to consolidated accounting entities governed by Czech law that:

• are established in the form of a commercial company,
• are controlled by a consolidating entity governed by the law of a non-EU country,
• have a total annual net consolidated turnover exceeding CZK 4.8 billion, and
• where the group’s total annual net turnover exceeds EUR 450 million in both the relevant accounting period and the immediately preceding accounting period, calculated solely from turnover generated within EU Member States.

If the ultimate third-country parent undertaking does not provide the consolidated sustainability report upon request of the consolidated accounting entity, the Czech consolidated accounting entity itself will be required to prepare and subsequently publish the consolidated sustainability report of the third-country undertaking. The obligation to publish such a report will arise for accounting periods beginning on or after 1 January 2028.

The obligation to make the annual report and other accounting documents, including the sustainability report, publicly available through the Single Access Point via the Czech National Bank, is effective from January 2028. As this obligation is linked to the duty to prepare a sustainability report or a sustainability report of a third-country undertaking, the proposed amendment newly defines the scope of entities subject to this obligation.

The proposed amendment to the Accounting Act represents another stage in the implementation of European sustainability legislation and changes the parameters of the sustainability reporting obligation. Although the number of entities required to report is reduced, a number of accounting entities, including groups headquartered outside the EU, may newly fall within scope or be affected to a different extent. We therefore recommend monitoring the further progress of the legislative process and assessing, in sufficient advance, whether and to what extent the proposed changes will impact a specific accounting entity or group.

Author:

Kateřina Dedková