Privacy concerns mount: Tax Committee eyes personal card data in aggressive push to track citizen finances

The draft decree, currently undergoing public consultation, outlines the deployment of an automated digital data-sharing platform dubbed the Bank–Tax module. If approved, the system would compel commercial banks to automatically notify tax officials whenever an individual or a company opens a bank account or long-term deposit. More contentiously, the regulation forces financial institutions to hand over specific, detailed transaction records upon demand for state regulatory audits.

The most severe public backlash focuses on a new mandate targeting routine peer-to-peer (P2P) financial activity. Under the draft text, banks will be legally required to flag and report any individual whose personal card or digital wallet receives a total monthly influx of funds from other citizens exceeding 500 base calculating amounts (BCA) – a threshold that currently equals UZS 206,000,000 and will rise to UZS 220,000,000 after September 1, 2026. Transactions between immediate family members are excluded, but all other high-volume personal transfers will be pushed straight to state databases.

Additionally, the framework requires banks to report money transfers made by citizens to foreign legal entities, though the committee claims this international transaction tracking will be processed in an anonymized format without explicit personal identification details.

Regulatory defense amid absolute public disapproval

The public portal hosting the text has become a lightning rod for community anger, with every single public comment left on the system registering a purely negative response. Citizens and financial analysts argue that forcing banks to act as state informants undermines the foundational trust of the domestic banking system.

Scrambling to manage the backlash, the Tax Committee issued a formal defense of the plan. Officials argue the text does not grant them brand-new legal powers or dissolve banking secrecy laws. Instead, they maintain that the draft merely establishes a standardized electronic format, uniform deadlines, and automated protocols for information sharing that is already technically legal under current statutes.

To support this, the committee cited Section 134 of the Tax Code, which already orders commercial banks to report account openings, closures, or modifications within three days. They also pointed to Article 11 of the Law on Banking Secrecy, which permits the transfer of client information to revenue services for tax purposes, noting that any data received is classified as a protected tax secret that cannot be legally leaked to third parties.

According to tax officials, this aggressive digital integration mirrors data-sharing mechanisms used across the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and aligns with the Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes, which Uzbekistan joined to combat the shadow economy.

Should the Cabinet of Ministers sign off on the decree after the public comment window slams shut on July 8, the Tax Committee and the Central Bank will have two months to finalize the technical blueprints for the Bank–Tax module. Commercial banks will then be given a strict four-month deadline to integrate their internal networks directly with state tax servers. Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Economy and Finance Jamshid Kuchkarov, alongside Tax Committee Chairman Farrukh Pulatov, will directly oversee the enforcement of the new system.