Belarus · Freeport & special zone
Hi-Tech Park residency (Decree No. 8)
Open, but a weaker offer than its reputation. The regime runs under the Park statute approved by Presidential Decree No. 12 of 22 September 2005 as recast by Decree No. 8 of 21 December 2017, with the permitted-activity list widened to more than forty categories by Presidential Edict No. 102 of 12 April 2023. The headline 9% income tax rate for Park employees does not apply: staff pay the ordinary 13%, and that treatment runs to 1 January 2028.
The corporate side of this regime is genuinely strong and often understated: 0% profit tax on resident activity, turnover outside VAT altogether, and a flat 1% of revenue in place of both. The part that gets marketed — the 9% personal rate for engineers — has been switched off since 2023, so Park staff pay the ordinary 13% and are fully exposed to the new 25% and 30% bands above BYN 350,000 and BYN 600,000. The durable personal benefit is that social contributions are computed on the national average salary rather than on actual pay, which caps the cost of a well-paid engineer sharply.
Qualifying routes
In place of profit tax and VAT, residents remit 1% of the previous quarter's gross revenue to the Park administration.
The facts
- Total landed cost
- 1% of gross revenue paid to the Park administration, in place of profit tax and VAT on resident activity. There is no capital threshold; the cost is the business plan and the admission process.
- Route type
- Freeport & special zone
- Timeline
- 2–6 months (Admission turns on the business plan and the activity falling inside the permitted list.)
- Physical presence
- For the company. Park residency is a corporate status and does not itself confer residence on the founder, who needs a permit on one of the ordinary grounds.
- Permanent residency
- None directly. The Park status supports a business-ground temporary permit; it does not produce one.
- Citizenship
- None directly.
- Language test
- Not applicable
- Dual citizenship
- Not permitted. You would have to renounce.
- Requirements
- an activity on the Park's permitted listan accepted business plan and admission by the Park administrationquarterly remittance of 1% of gross revenue
- THE 9% EMPLOYEE RATE IS NOT AVAILABLE. Park staff pay 13%, and from 2026 they hit 25% above BYN 350,000 and 30% above BYN 600,000 like everyone else. The 13% treatment runs to 1 January 2028.
- Digital token operations are taxed at 9% rather than falling under the 0%.
- Residents must stay inside the permitted-activity list; drifting outside it costs the status.
- Withholding on dividends to residents of states Belarus designates unfriendly is 25%, not the 15% domestic rate and not a treaty rate, because Council of Ministers Resolution No. 164 of 7 March 2024 suspended the relevant treaty articles. That suspension is stated to run to 31 December 2026 with no published successor.
- Belarus sits inside the same sanctions perimeter as Russia for most practical purposes. Visa stopped servicing cards of three Belarusian banks across the EU, UK, Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein in March 2026, and Mastercard cut off Alfa-Bank and Belgazprombank cards in the EU, UK and EFTA from 21 April 2026. Foreign cards work unevenly inside Belarus depending on which bank owns the terminal. Cross-border settlement and correspondent banking are the binding constraint, not the tax rate.