“Yandex.Taxi must be registered in Uzbekistan and start paying taxes” – Mubin Mirzayev

On April 3, first deputy chairman of the State Tax Committee Mubin Mirzayev said that Yandex.Taxi should be registered in Uzbekistan. Spot correspondent reports referring to the regular session of the International Press Club in Tashkent.

According to Mirzayev, the company now does not pay any taxes.

“We studied the situation. The company does not pay taxes. Practically, none of the 10,000 customers of the service (drivers) also pay taxes. The only way to streamline the system is that the company must be registered as a taxpayer,” Mr. Mirzayev said.

The head of the department at the Ministry of Transport Ruslan Ruzmetov added that Yandex provides electronic services and does not focus on licensing drivers.

“When connecting to the system, the license is optional. Therefore, it turns out that Yandex has 10,000 drivers, although there are 5,000 licensed drivers in Tashkent,” Ruzmetov said.

A representative of Like Taxi Farrukh Urunov, one of the local partners of Yandex.Taxi, also participating in the session, said that they, as a taxi company, pay tax turnover and Yandex.Taxi pays 5% VAT. Urunov also noted that Yandex.Taxi, having arrived in Uzbekistan, had already actually been legalized.

Earlier, Mirzayev has already mentioned Yandex.Taxi when there was a problem of increasing sales on the Internet by people who did not officially register the business. A representative of the State Tax Committee then noted that the committee is studying this issue and intends to levy taxes on such traders.

“First of all, we will identify and fix any trade that is carried out through the Internet, including on Facebook and other social networks. We plan to link the received information with our database in order to collect taxes from sellers. There is the same problem with Yandex.Taxi as well. We will start taxing them too,” Mirzayev noted then.

In response to this, “Yandex.Taxi” stated that in Uzbekistan, the service works only with partners – taxi companies and controller’s offices.

“Taxi services online in Tashkent and other cities contribute to development of the industry and compete with the illegal market services. In the future, it is important to create in Uzbekistan comfortable conditions for taxi drivers who want to work for themselves, including in the matter of taxation,” the company said.

Such conditions are already being created – in early March it became known that individual entrepreneurs would be allowed to provide taxi services – this was envisaged by a presidential decree.

At the end of March, the Agency for road transport developed and published a corresponding draft of the presidential decree. In the event of its adoption, it legalizes the uberization in passenger traffic and allows individual entrepreneurs to be taxi drivers.