For international tech groups, the list of places to build an R&D center outside the EU has narrowed to a handful of jurisdictions with special IT regimes. Three of them come up in almost every conversation we have with founders and CFOs: Belarus’s Hi-Tech Park (HTP), Uzbekistan’s IT Park and Armenia’s state support programme for […]
Most foreign IT companies hire their first people in Belarus the same way. A product company in London or Dubai finds two or three strong engineers in Minsk, has no appetite for incorporating a company for a handful of hires, and signs them up through an Employer of Record. The provider holds the employment contracts, […]
Selling a Belarusian IT company used to be a fairly ordinary corporate transaction. A buyer reviewed the books, the parties signed a share purchase agreement, the charter was amended, and the new owner took over. In 2026 the legal mechanics of a share transfer are still simple on paper, but the deal around them is […]
Your Belarus team are doing a good job. The issue is the admin around them. The global EOR platform you’ve had for a few years is now responding more slowly, the invoices are much harder to read and they’re charging more per head than the local market would justify. Switching to a different provider makes […]
A lot of IT group companies write their code in Minsk and keep the intellectual property somewhere else: a holding company in Cyprus or the Netherlands, the US parent, or a hub in the UAE. When the Belarusian company uses that IP to earn money, the group usually wants a royalty to flow back to […]
Most foreign groups with a team in Belarus charge the local company for head-office support: finance, HR, legal, IT, and sometimes a share of senior management time. The logic is sound. The Belarusian entity uses those services, and someone has to pay for them. Problems start when the tax office asks for evidence. A management […]
Most foreign founders arrive in Belarus with an audit rule of thumb borrowed from home. In the EU, small companies are usually exempt, while in some jurisdictions every subsidiary is audited. Neither assumption holds in Minsk. Belarusian law decides who needs a statutory audit by status, size and a handful of specific events — not […]
Armenia remains one of the most attractive countries in the region for tech businesses. Rather than offering one-off relief, the government supports the IT sector through a long-term programme that runs until the end of 2031. This guide explains which IT tax benefits Armenia offers today, who can claim them, how to register a company […]
Most foreign founders carry the same mental model into a distribution. The subsidiary earns a profit, profit tax is paid, the shareholders declare a dividend, and the money lands in the parent’s account minus a single withholding line. It is a clean picture, and for a company incorporated in a calmer jurisdiction it would mostly […]
In international business, the right base can quietly reshape your margins. Georgia, sitting at the crossroads of Eastern Europe and Western Asia, has spent the last decade turning itself into a magnet for technology companies, borrowing heavily from the Estonian model of taxing profit only when it leaves the business. For IT founders the appeal […]
Ask a foreign founder what VAT their Belarusian High-Tech Park entity pays, and the answer is almost always the same: “Nothing — we’re exempt.” It is a reasonable belief, and most of the time it produces the right number. But it is the wrong mental model, and the gap between the model and the mechanics […]
Most EOR invoices get paid on trust. One lands at the start of the month, the total is close to last month’s, and someone in finance signs it off before lunch. That holds up right until it doesn’t — until a leaver turns out to have been paid for two months after they left, or […]
