The AIFC tax regime gives digital-asset businesses operating from Kazakhstan a genuinely low-rate environment – but the relief depends on entity structure, regulatory standing and how cross-border income flows are managed.
Businesses considering the Astana International Financial Centre (AIFC) as a digital-asset base frequently discover that the tax advantages are real yet conditional. The AIFC operates as a common-law enclave with its own regulatory authority – the Astana Financial Services Authority (AFSA) – and a distinct tax regime that differs materially from the Kazakhstan national framework. A company authorised by AFSA and earning qualifying income from digital-asset activities within the AIFC perimeter can access a near-zero direct-tax environment. That relief does not extend automatically to offshore group entities, to founders who retain residence elsewhere, or to income routed outside the centre's defined perimeter. For a token issuer or exchange operator, understanding where that line sits is the starting point for every structuring decision.
This page covers the AIFC tax perimeter, who qualifies, how inbound digital-asset businesses structure their Kazakhstan presence, how that structure interacts with cross-border banking and holding arrangements, and where the common mistakes arise. One anonymised matter illustrates the decision in practice.
What is the AIFC tax perimeter, and who qualifies?
The AIFC grants qualifying participants an exemption from corporate income tax and individual income tax on qualifying income for a defined transitional period – one of the centre's founding incentives. AFSA-authorised entities engaged in regulated digital-asset activities are treated as operating within the AIFC perimeter when their income arises from those activities and their registered seat is within the centre. The national Kazakhstan tax rules – which apply to the broader economy – operate in parallel but do not govern AIFC participants on qualifying income. This creates a clean structural distinction: an AFSA-authorised digital-asset trading facility or custody provider pays no corporate income tax on profits derived from those regulated activities for as long as the exemption period runs.
The qualification conditions are structural, not simply a matter of registration. The entity must hold the relevant AFSA authorisation, maintain genuine economic substance within the centre, and earn income that falls within the defined scope of exempt activities. Income from activities outside the AIFC perimeter – for instance, fee income routed through a non-AIFC entity or advisory revenue paid to a holding company in another jurisdiction – does not receive the exemption and remains subject to the applicable national or treaty rules.
AFSA regulates digital-asset activities under the AIFC framework, covering concepts such as a digital-asset trading facility and custody of digital assets. The regulatory status and the tax status are linked: the exemption attaches to authorised participants, not to unregulated structures that happen to be registered in Nur-Sultan. In our cross-border practice, we regularly advise clients who conflate registration with authorisation and are therefore surprised when the tax analysis does not follow the structure they assumed.
How should an inbound digital-asset operator structure its AIFC entity?
An inbound digital-asset business typically structures its AIFC presence through one of two principal paths: a standalone AIFC operating company holding its own AFSA authorisation, or an AIFC operating subsidiary sitting beneath an offshore holding company that consolidates the group's intellectual property, treasury and investor relationships. The right choice depends on the business's revenue model, investor base, exit horizon and where its senior management are – or intend to be – tax resident.
The standalone path is cleaner for operators whose entire digital-asset business will be conducted from the AIFC. It concentrates regulatory, operational and tax substance in one place, satisfies AFSA's economic-substance expectations and keeps the tax analysis simple: exempt qualifying income in the AIFC, with no leakage through intermediate holding layers. For a spot-exchange operator or a custody provider whose customer base is concentrated in Central Asia and the CIS, this structure is often the most direct.
The offshore holding structure is more common among operators with a broader investor base – including institutional capital from the EU or the Gulf – or with a token-issuance component that requires a jurisdiction with a distinct legal treatment for token sales. Here, the AIFC entity handles regulated operations and earns exempt income; an offshore vehicle (often a BVI or Cayman company, or an ADGM entity for Gulf-aligned operators) holds the equity and receives dividends or inter-company income. The cross-border tax position then depends on the treaty network, the character of the payments and whether the holding company has sufficient substance to avoid being treated as a conduit. Kazakhstan has a network of double-tax treaties, and AIFC-to-holdco dividend flows should be assessed against those treaties and the domestic withholding rules before a structure is finalised.
AFSA requires genuine substance within the centre for an authorised participant – staffing, decision-making and management presence are not satisfied by a postal address alone. Operators who underestimate this requirement face both a regulatory and a tax risk: a substance challenge by AFSA can unwind both the authorisation and the basis for the tax exemption simultaneously.
For a scoped assessment of how your holding structure interacts with the AIFC tax perimeter, contact OBOLUS at info@oboluslaw.com. The process above describes the standard path. Your facts – the entity type, the investor base, the geography of your users – change the analysis materially, and a structure that works for a custody provider may not work for a token issuer.
How does the AIFC treat token issuance and related income?
Token issuance from an AIFC entity sits at the intersection of the AFSA regulatory regime and the tax perimeter – and the two do not always move in lockstep. AFSA has developed frameworks for digital-asset activities that include concepts relevant to token offerings, and the applicable rulebooks set out the regulatory treatment of proceeds and ongoing obligations. The tax treatment of token-sale proceeds, by contrast, depends on how those proceeds are characterised: as income, as a capital contribution or as a liability (where tokens carry redemption rights).
Income characterisation matters because the AIFC tax exemption applies to qualifying income from regulated activities. If token-sale proceeds are treated as taxable revenue in the year of receipt, the exemption potentially applies. If they are treated as deferred income or as a liability pending delivery of the token utility, the timing of tax recognition shifts. In our practice, we regularly advise token-issuing clients that the accounting treatment of proceeds should be decided before the structure is finalised, not after the token generation event has occurred.
A related issue arises where a token has been issued by an offshore entity – a common pattern among operators who set up their token-issuance vehicle outside Kazakhstan before exploring the AIFC – and the operator subsequently moves regulated trading operations into the AIFC. In that scenario, the AIFC entity's income is exempt; but the token-issuance vehicle's income is governed by its own jurisdiction's rules, and inter-company arrangements between the two entities (licence fees, service agreements, profit participations) each carry their own tax character. Getting this wrong at the setup stage creates restructuring costs that frequently exceed the original savings.
How does the AIFC tax position interact with banking and cross-border fund flows?
Digital-asset operators in the AIFC regularly find that the tax analysis and the banking analysis must be solved together. A cleanly structured AIFC operating entity with genuine substance can open accounts with banks that operate within the AIFC, and some international banks with a Kazakhstan or regional presence will bank AFSA-authorised entities. However, the operator's ability to move funds across borders – to pay overseas suppliers, distribute to offshore holdco, or repatriate investor returns – depends on the character of the payment, the treaty position and the correspondent-bank chain's tolerance for digital-asset counterparties.
Withholding tax on outbound payments is one of the most commonly overlooked points. Where an AIFC operating company makes payments to a non-resident – whether for software licences, management services, or dividend distributions – the applicable withholding rate is determined by the double-tax treaty between Kazakhstan and the recipient's jurisdiction, or by domestic withholding rules where no treaty applies. The AIFC tax exemption does not eliminate withholding obligations on outbound flows; it applies at the level of the AIFC entity's own income. Operators who structure assuming that exemption covers the entire payment chain discover the gap at the point of a banking review or a tax authority query.
A second cross-border issue arises for operators with EU users. MiCA – the EU's Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation, supervised by ESMA and national competent authorities – imposes marketing and service restrictions on non-EU operators serving EU customers. An AIFC-based exchange serving EU users without the appropriate MiCA authorisation (or an operating subsidiary in an EU member state) may face regulatory action in the EU regardless of its AIFC standing. This is a recurring structuring problem: the AIFC tax position is optimal for the Kazakhstan entity, but the revenue from EU users may require a separate regulated vehicle – which then creates its own tax and transfer-pricing questions.
Does founder tax residency matter for the AIFC structure?
Founder residency and corporate structure must be decided together – treating them as separate questions is the single most common and most costly mistake we see at this stage of a digital-asset operator's growth. An AIFC operating company achieves its exempt status at the entity level. A founder who remains tax resident in a high-tax jurisdiction may find that dividends, deemed distributions or employment income from the AIFC entity are taxable in their country of residence under that country's domestic rules, regardless of what the AIFC regime says.
A common assumption among operators considering the AIFC is that relocating personally is enough to change the group's tax position. It is not. Relocating a founder to Kazakhstan – or to the UAE, which is a popular paired move for AIFC-structured groups – changes the founder's personal tax position only if the relocation is substantive, the prior residence is properly surrendered, and the personal and corporate arrangements are aligned. A founder who spends the minimum necessary days in a low-tax jurisdiction while retaining a home, family, and business connections in a higher-tax country will generally remain tax resident in the original jurisdiction under that jurisdiction's tie-breaker tests.
In our practice, we align founder residency planning with the holding structure and the exit plan from the beginning of the engagement. A structure that generates exempt income in the AIFC but routes those proceeds to a founder who remains taxable in Germany or the UK has not solved the problem; it has deferred it.
Kazakhstan's own domestic tax rules – which apply to individuals resident in Kazakhstan outside the AIFC context – are a separate matter. Personal income tax on Kazakhstan-source income applies at a flat rate under the national framework, and AIFC participants who are individuals (as opposed to AIFC-authorised companies) should confirm which set of rules governs their personal position.
If your residency plan and your holding structure have not been reviewed together, OBOLUS can run a coordinated analysis. Write to us at info@oboluslaw.com or message us via t.me/oboluslaw. If a prior structure has already been filed or a banking relationship opened on the basis of an unreviewed assumption, a second read frequently surfaces the correction before a compliance event forces it.
What are the most common structuring mistakes AIFC digital-asset operators make?
The AIFC tax exemption is straightforward in its design and frequently misapplied in practice. Based on the mandates we handle, five structural errors recur at disproportionate cost.
The first is substance underprovision. AFSA's economic-substance requirements mean that a company staffed with one compliance officer and no senior decision-makers in Nur-Sultan will face a challenge – from AFSA on the regulatory side and, potentially, from another jurisdiction's tax authority asserting effective management and control elsewhere. The remedy is genuine localisation, not a cosmetic headcount adjustment.
The second is mischaracterisation of intra-group payments. Licence fees, management charges and technical-service agreements between the AIFC operating entity and an offshore holding company are each potentially subject to withholding tax and must reflect arm's-length pricing. Transfer pricing is not a concern only for large multinationals; it applies as soon as there are related-party cross-border payments.
The third is assuming that AIFC exemption covers withholding on outbound distributions. As noted above, the exemption applies at the income level of the AIFC entity, not to the character of payments it makes to non-residents.
The fourth is late residency planning. Founders who restructure personally after the company is already earning income face a retroactive period in which their prior residence rules still applied. Planning works; retroactive restructuring is expensive and legally uncertain.
The fifth – and increasingly common – is ignoring MiCA reach. An AIFC-structured operator serving EU users without a MiCA-compliant vehicle faces EU regulatory enforcement, EU financial-promotion restrictions and, where sanctions regimes interact, potential banking consequences in the EU. The AIFC structure optimises Kazakhstan; it does not insulate the business from EU-facing regulatory obligations.
A structuring matter in practice
In a recent cross-border structuring engagement, a digital-asset exchange operator had incorporated an AIFC subsidiary to house its Central Asian trading operations and had begun moving its primary fiat-to-crypto volume through that entity. The founder, a national of an EU member state, had relocated personally to the Gulf. On review, we identified that the founder's prior-residence country applied a departure tax rule that treated unrealised gains on company shares as taxable at the point the founder became non-resident – a liability the founder was unaware of. We worked with allied counsel in the relevant EU jurisdiction to assess the applicable treaty position, restructure the timing of the share transfer and document the departure properly. The AIFC entity's exempt status was preserved; the founder's prior-residence exposure was addressed before a compliance event occurred.
Which operator profile benefits most from an AIFC structure?
Not every digital-asset business should anchor in the AIFC, and the tax position is only one dimension of the decision. Three operator profiles illustrate the range.
A Central Asia – or CIS-focused exchange operator looking to serve retail and institutional users in the region, hold regulated status, and maintain a lean cost base is the natural AIFC candidate. The regulatory regime under AFSA, the tax exemption for qualifying income, and the common-law legal environment give this operator a strong structural foundation. The key risk is substance: the business must genuinely operate from Nur-Sultan.
A token issuer with a global distribution – including EU, US and Gulf investors – faces a more complex picture. The AIFC may be the right place for the regulated operating entity and the Central Asia revenue stream, but the token itself may need to be issued from a jurisdiction with a more developed token-offering regime (such as Switzerland under FINMA, or an EU jurisdiction under MiCA). The AIFC entity then sits alongside, not instead of, those vehicles.
An institutional custody provider primarily serving Gulf-based family offices and sovereign-adjacent capital may find that the AIFC and ADGM (Abu Dhabi Global Market, regulated by the FSRA) serve complementary roles: ADGM for the Gulf-facing regulated entity, AIFC for the Kazakhstan and broader CIS operating entity. The two centres share a common-law basis and the relationship between them is well understood by regional institutional investors.
In each case, the tax position and the regulatory position should be assessed in parallel. A structure that is tax-optimal but not regulatorily authorised achieves nothing; a structure that is authorised but tax-inefficient leaves value on the table.
Related at OBOLUS
- Tax and cross-border structuring for digital-asset businesses – how we structure tax-efficient, regulatorily sound holding arrangements across multiple jurisdictions
- Crypto holding structure for established operators – the building blocks of a scalable holding structure for an operator with revenue and an investor base
- Cross-chain bridge legal risk under MiCA – the EU regulatory risk an AIFC-based operator faces when its protocol interacts with EU users
FAQ
Where should a token-issuing entity be domiciled?
There is no single correct answer. The domicile of a token-issuing entity depends on the token's legal classification, the investor base, the regulatory regime the issuer is willing to accept, and the applicable tax treatment of proceeds. The AIFC is appropriate for operators focused on Central Asian distribution under AFSA authorisation; operators targeting EU or Swiss investors typically require a parallel entity in a MiCA or FINMA jurisdiction. In our practice, we assess classification, regulatory reach and tax character together before recommending a domicile.
How are staking rewards taxed?
The tax treatment of staking rewards is not uniform across jurisdictions and is rarely addressed expressly in statute. Within the AIFC perimeter, qualifying income from authorised digital-asset activities may fall within the tax exemption, but the characterisation of staking rewards – as income, as a capital return or as a service fee – depends on the specific arrangement and how it is structured within the AIFC entity. Outside the AIFC, national and treaty rules apply. We advise structuring the staking arrangement explicitly and documenting its character before reporting positions are taken.
Does remote working create tax residency risk?
Yes – materially so. A senior employee or founder working remotely from a jurisdiction other than the AIFC can create a taxable presence for the AIFC entity in that other jurisdiction, particularly where that person has authority to conclude contracts on behalf of the company. This is the permanent-establishment risk. It is distinct from the founder's personal residency risk described above, though the two often arise together. Pre-deployment review of the relevant jurisdiction's permanent-establishment tests, and clear documentation of where decisions are made, is standard practice for any multi-jurisdictional digital-asset group.
OBOLUS is an independent digital-asset law boutique acting only for businesses. We advise exchanges, custodians, token issuers and funds on licensing across 70+ jurisdictions, on disputes and on-chain asset recovery across 25+ forums, and on the tax, banking and compliance structures that sit around them. Digital assets are the whole of our practice. We align founder residency with the holding structure and exit plan – because personal and corporate tax decisions in the AIFC context are inseparable. To discuss your situation, contact info@oboluslaw.com.
By Lydia Brennan, Tax & Structuring Analyst – specialising in cross-border holding structures, founder residency planning and tax optimisation for digital-asset operators in the AIFC, Gulf and EU regimes.
This publication is general information about the law and does not constitute legal advice. It is not a substitute for advice tailored to your circumstances. OBOLUS accepts no liability for action taken or not taken on the basis of this material. For advice on your situation, contact info@oboluslaw.com.