Kazakhstan is set to introduce new strict tax administration rules starting July 1, 2026, reports Todayinfo. Heads of companies and individual entrepreneurs with substantial budget debts will face restrictions on leaving the country.
This was announced by tax consultant Aidar Masatbayev. According to Article 189 of the new Tax Code, fiscal authorities will gain the right to temporarily restrict foreign travel for legal entities' first executives, their deputies, individual entrepreneurs, and self-employed individuals.
The expert emphasizes that the emergence of debt does not automatically mean a border ban. For this to happen, three conditions must coincide simultaneously:
- the company's debt exceeds 27,000 MCI (Monthly Calculation Index), which will be over 99 million tenge in 2026;
- the debt has not been repaid for more than three months;
- standard measures (account blocking, property seizure) have already been applied but yielded no results.
However, the tax authority's decision will not take effect automatically — the resolution must be sanctioned by a court. The judge is given 3 working days to review the materials. The law does not provide for a special preliminary notification specifically about the travel ban, but by this point, the businessman will already be aware of problems due to the company's account blocking.
According to Aidar Masatbayev, this is the main reform: the state is for the first time shifting tax pressure from the company itself to the individual managing the business.
Previously, tax administration worked by impacting company assets. These measures did not affect the personal rights of executives. Now, the state is beginning to restrict the personal non-property rights of the executive. Formally, the debt remains with the company, but the consequences are borne by the specific director. In fact, Kazakhstan is gradually moving towards a model of personalized tax pressure on business management, — the expert explained.
This norm will not apply to ordinary citizens who are not executives or individual entrepreneurs (for them, the previous rules for restricting travel due to personal debts will remain).
The specialist warns that due to regular failures in the information systems of tax authorities (specifically, ISNA), businessmen may face erroneous bans. If a system failure previously led to a company's account being blocked, now a director might discover a fiscal error directly at the airport, which could lead to the disruption of international contracts or personal trips.
The law obliges the restriction to be lifted within one working day after the debt is paid, but in practice, the procedure can be delayed.
The problem is that the lifting of the restriction also undergoes judicial sanctioning and interdepartmental data transfer to the Border Service of the National Security Committee (KNB). In practice, a certain amount of time will pass between rectifying the error and the actual opening of the border, — Masatbayev concluded.
