Setting Up a Business in Kazakhstan

An in-depth guide for foreign entrepreneurs and companies looking to enter the Kazakh market — Central Asia’s largest economy, resource-driven, with a foreign investment framework genuinely modernized around its Astana International Financial Centre.
This guide covers legal structures — the onshore LLP (TOO), the default and most open route, permitting a sole foreign founder and director with no residency requirement, alongside AIFC entities under English common law for financial-services activities, offering 0% tax on qualifying AIFC-source income until 2066 — business taxation (20% standard CIT, 12% VAT), company formation, Kazakhstan’s 14 Special Economic Zones and the Astana Hub IT-sector zone, the cost of labor, and immigration routes for executives, investors, and entrepreneurs, including the annually reviewed work-permit quota system. Includes an operational checklist and useful contacts.
Available in English.