Astana Hub or IT Park Uzbekistan: which should you join?
Both offer a 0% corporate tax regime. The real difference is what happens to your company eighteen months later, when you raise from outside the region.
By Artur Aiupov
If you are building a technology company in Central Asia, you will be pushed toward one of two institutions early: Astana Hub in Kazakhstan or IT Park Uzbekistan in Tashkent. Both are state-backed technology parks, both offer a 0% corporate tax regime, and both will accept you quickly.
The tax headline is close enough that it should not decide anything. What should decide it is where your customers and engineers are, and what your company needs to look like when an investor outside the region runs diligence on it.
The fiscal terms, side by side
Astana Hub grants residents 0% corporate income tax and 0% VAT, with a reduced rate of individual income tax, under a regime currently legislated to run to 1 January 2029. Social tax is waived for foreign employees. Registration is free, done online, and decided in roughly fifteen business days.
One change matters more than it first appears: from 2026 a resident must draw at least 90% of its income from the qualifying activities and keep separate accounts for them. A company with meaningful non-technology revenue — consulting, reselling, an unrelated side business — can lose the benefit without noticing until it files.
IT Park Uzbekistan grants residents 0% corporate income tax and 0% social tax, with employee personal income tax at 7.5%. Foreign investors may hold 100% of a resident company, and registration can complete in as little as three working days.
Two features have no equivalent in Kazakhstan. The IT Visa is a multiple-entry visa of up to three years, extendable, giving the holder access to education and medical services on the same terms as citizens and removing the usual residence-registration burden. And an export programme reimburses up to half the cost of international market activity — trade missions, certification, overseas marketing — for residents expanding abroad. For a company whose plan is to sell outside the region, that is a direct subsidy on exactly the expensive part.
| What is being compared | Astana Hub | IT Park Uzbekistan |
|---|---|---|
| Where | Kazakhstan | Tashkent, Uzbekistan |
| Corporate income tax | 0% | 0% |
| VAT | 0% | Not waived under the regime |
| Social tax | Waived for foreign employees | 0% |
| Employee income tax | Reduced rate | 7.5% |
| Registration | Free and online, decided in about fifteen business days | As little as three working days |
| Foreign ownership | Permitted | 100% permitted |
| Regime runs to | 1 January 2029 as currently legislated | No equivalent end date published |
| The catch | From 2026, at least 90% of income must come from qualifying activities, with separate accounts kept | No equivalent income test published |
| Residency for founders | No equivalent | IT Visa: multiple-entry, up to three years, extendable, with access to education and medical services |
| Help selling abroad | No equivalent | Export programme reimbursing up to half the cost of international market activity |
The markets are not the same size, and not at the same stage
Central Asian venture funding reached roughly $320 million in 2025. Kazakhstan accounts for the majority of it — venture investment there nearly tripled to $209 million, with artificial intelligence taking about half — and the region produced its first unicorn in Higgsfield, valued at $1.3 billion.
Uzbekistan is smaller and earlier: $33.8 million, but more than eleven times its 2022 level. It also has the larger population, and Tashkent ranked as Central Asia’s leading startup city for the first time in 2026.
Read those numbers as two different bets. Kazakhstan has more capital in the room, more completed rounds, and a shorter path to a local lead investor. Uzbekistan has more growth ahead of it, a bigger domestic market to prove a product in, and a government buying that growth with policy.
How to actually choose
Four questions, in order of how much they should weigh:
- Where are your first hundred customers? If the product is domestic, this is almost the whole answer. Neither tax regime compensates for building in a market that cannot buy.
- Where can you hire? Engineering supply and salary levels differ, and so does the ease of bringing someone in from outside. Uzbekistan’s IT Visa is the more generous instrument here.
- Is your revenue clean? If more than ten per cent of your income falls outside the qualifying activities, Astana Hub’s 2026 rule becomes a live risk rather than a footnote.
- How much international selling is in the next eighteen months? If the answer is “a lot”, the Uzbek export reimbursement is real money against a real line item.
What should not weigh heavily: which programme has the better demo day, and which headline tax rate is nominally lower. They are close enough to be noise against the first four questions.
The part founders usually get wrong
Residency in either park is an operating decision, not a structuring decision. It gives you a low-tax entity in the region. It does not give you the company an international investor will want to buy shares in.
Most companies that raise from US or EU investors eventually hold a parent company in a jurisdiction those investors already understand — Delaware, the UK, sometimes the UAE or Estonia — with the regional entity underneath it. That reorganisation is straightforward while the cap table is three people and a SAFE. It becomes expensive, slow and occasionally tax-triggering once there are employees with options, revenue in two countries, and an existing shareholder who does not want to sign anything.
The mistake is not choosing the wrong park. The mistake is treating residency as the end of the structuring conversation, and then discovering the real one during diligence on a term sheet you would rather not lose.
If you are weighing this now, we are happy to talk it through. We have helped companies through the move in both directions, and we have no commercial interest in which park you pick.
Sources: published resident terms from Astana Hub and IT Park Uzbekistan; regional funding figures from Forbes, reporting figures from RISE Research. Figures and programme terms are as published in September 2026 and change often — confirm current terms with each institution before relying on them.