At the 10th meeting of the Project Office for the Implementation of the Tax Code, chaired by Deputy Prime Minister - Minister of National Economy Serik Zhumangarin, the next pool of issues related to the application of new tax regulations was considered.

One of the key issues was the work of Internet platform operators who do not participate in settlements between customers and buyers, but are required to act as tax agents. It was raised by Timur Zharkenov, Deputy Chairman of the National Chamber of Entrepreneurs "Atameken" and representatives of the Kazakh taxi and cargo transportation platform Aparu.

As business representatives noted, there are two main models of operation of Internet platforms on the market today: transactional and P2P. In the transactional model, payments pass through the platform — the operator sees the cash flows and performs the functions of a tax agent. Large services, such as Indriver, operate according to this scheme.

In the P2P model, settlements occur directly between the customer and the contractor, without the involvement of the platform. In this case, the operator is not the source of the payment and is unable to perform the functions of a tax agent.

In the previous Tax Code, there was an exception for such platforms, but in the new document it was abolished, and the requirement became mandatory for everyone. The business proposed to return to the previous norm, noting that self-employed drivers can independently pay social security payments through second-tier banks. At the same time, the transition to a transactional model, according to business estimates, will lead to an increase in the cost of services due to additional social payments (about 4% per year) and bank commissions.

As noted by Vice Minister of Finance Yerzhan Birzhanov, the government is consistently building a system of full digitalization and coverage of all participants – banks, aggregators and marketplaces – in the tax administration circuit. A return to the previous practice of self-payment of taxes by the self-employed may reduce the transparency of cash flows and receipt of social payments.

According to the Ministry of Finance, over the three years of pilot integration with CGD systems, 27 out of 33 operators have already been operating as tax agents.

Vice Minister of Labor and Social Protection of the Population Bakhtiyar Zhazykpayev noted that since the launch of the employment platform, more than 400 thousand unique payments have been made, of which only pension contributions amounted to 3.7 billion tenge. Abandoning the current approach may lead to a decrease in these revenues.

After listening to the positions of the parties, the Deputy Prime Minister instructed government agencies, together with Atameken and business, to further develop support measures without changing the basic logic of the Tax Code and to re-submit the issue to the project office for consideration.

Issues related to personal subsidiary farms and agricultural cooperatives were considered separately.

The first is the procedure for confirming the status of a personal subsidiary farm (LPH) when selling surplus products (milk, meat, etc.) to reduce personal income tax. Despite the preservation of the norm itself in the Tax Code, the relevant certificate was excluded from the register of public services due to the risks of abuse and use in gray schemes when sales volumes exceeded the real possibilities of private farms.

The second issue concerned corporate income tax rates of 6% for agricultural cooperatives and 3% for agricultural producers. In fact, such a burden was applied earlier, according to the previous Tax Code, due to tax reductions (at base rates of 20% and 10%, respectively). However, the difference in rates may deter the creation of cooperatives that combine farmers' resources for processing, storing and marketing products.

At the same time, the Auyl Amanaty program provides for measures to stimulate cooperation, in particular, preferential loans of up to 8,000 MCI. In 2023-2025, 18.5 thousand micro-loans were issued in the amount of 130.9 billion tenge, which allowed creating more than 21.3 thousand jobs. During this time, 870 new agricultural cooperatives have been created in all regions. 

Taking into account the social significance of the issues, primarily in terms of rural employment, it was decided to separately consider the tax policy in the agricultural sector, taking into account all existing state support measures, and return to the discussion at one of the next meetings of the Project Office.

https://www.gov.kz/memleket/entities/economy/press/news/details/1190261?lang=ru

Source : https://www.gov.kz/memleket/entities/kostanai-ekonomika-zhosparlau/press/news/details/1190970?lang=kk