Kazakhstan mandates online cash registers starting in 2020

NUR-SULTAN – All taxpayers who use traditional cash registers were to switch to online machines by the end of 2019, for beginning in 2020 all cash payments are to be made using online cash registers, said the Ministry of Finance State Revenue Committee’s Department of Digitisation and Public Services Acting Director Zangar Shyndali in an interview with PrimeMinister.kz.

Photo credit: primeminister.kz.

He noted 97 percent of the 640,000 cashiers registered in the country now work online and 480,000 taxpayers started using them in 2019. 

Introducing online cash registers is aimed at combatting tax evasion and the shadow economy. The method was implemented in response to President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev’s instructions to strengthen measures against tax evasion in his state-of-the-nation address “Constructive Public Dialogue – the Basis of Stability and Prosperity of Kazakhstan.”

“According to research, most of the shadow economy falls on trade where cash prevails. It is precisely cash registers that allow you to fiscalise this cash,” said Shyndali. 

He noted three billion checks have been struck online.   

“The more checks consumers will demand, the more information we will see and the more cash will be fiscalised,” he added. 

Taxpayers operating in areas lacking a telecommunication network are among those exempt from using online cashiers. Individuals, second-tier banks, long-distance carriers and taxpayers who never use cash settlements are allowed to use a traditional electronic cash register (ECR) without the online system. 

Taxpayers can transfer funds to an online cash register without visiting a tax office. Those registered as individual entrepreneurs or legal entities can purchase a register at a public service centre or download the application to switch to the one online. Taxpayers should register it on the fiscal data operator’s website and complete the contract. The operator will accept and transfer information about fiscal settlements to the tax administration. 

“He (a taxpayer) does not need to fill out a cash settlement book and there is no need to put a seal on an online cash register. He can do all this remotely and on the site of the fiscal data operator,” said Shyndali. 

Online cash registers allow entrepreneurs with more than two cash desks to monitor all payments and operations remotely. 

The government has been returning 50 percent of the cash register machine cost to taxpayers this year to encourage them to shift to online registers, he noted.

“Taxpayers who apply the special tax regime on the basis of a patent, as well as single land tax payers, and anyone who wants to purchase cash registers with a 50-percent discount, we urge them do it this year, because next year there will not be such an opportunity,” he added.


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