Croatia self-employed net income calculator (paušalni obrt)

How paušalni obrt in Croatia is calculated

Paušalni obrt (flat-rate sole proprietorship) is Croatia's simplest structure for a small freelance business, available up to 60,000 EUR of annual revenue. Its defining feature is that the bulk of the cost — the monthly social and health contributions, around 291 EUR a month here — barely moves with revenue.

On top of the flat contributions sits a modest lump-sum tax that steps up in bands as revenue rises. Because the contribution is nearly fixed, the effective tax rate falls sharply as revenue grows within the regime's cap — a freelancer near the top of the range keeps a much higher share of each extra euro than one near the bottom.

This is the opposite shape from most progressive tax systems, and it is the whole appeal of paušalni obrt: predictable monthly costs regardless of a good or bad month, at the price of losing any expense deduction once revenue is high enough that real costs would have been worth claiming.