Most companies join the High-Tech Park with one business model in mind and end up running a slightly — or substantially — different one a year or two later. A custom development shop lands on a product idea and starts selling subscriptions. A SaaS company adds a consulting line. A fintech studio decides to run its own exchange. Each of these is a normal commercial evolution, and each raises the same question that founders often think to ask only after the fact: does my HTP status still cover what my company actually does?
The short answer is that HTP resident status is not a blanket exemption attached to your company. It is attached to a defined set of activities — the ones described in the business project you submitted and had approved on entry. When your real operations drift away from that description, the tax benefits do not automatically stretch to cover the new work, and in the worst case the mismatch can put your resident status itself at risk. This article explains what your status covers, when a change of activity requires you to formally amend your business project, how the amendment procedure works, and where the real danger of losing residency lies.
What your HTP status actually covers
When a company is admitted to the Park, it does not receive an open-ended licence to conduct any IT business it likes. It receives approval for a specific business project — a document that describes, in concrete terms, the activities the company intends to carry out, how it will carry them out, and why they qualify under the regime. That business project is the anchor for everything that follows: your tax treatment, your reporting, and your standing with the regulator are all measured against it.
The activities you can put in that business project are not unlimited either. The regime works from a closed list of permitted activities — several dozen categories spanning software design and development, data processing, research and development, fintech and blockchain, education technology, and a range of adjacent fields. If an activity is on that list, it can potentially be added to your project. If it is not, it cannot be brought under the regime at all, however it is framed. The list has been broadened over the years, most significantly by the 2017 Digital Economy decree, but it remains a list — and everything outside it sits under Belarus’s ordinary tax and regulatory rules.
This is where founders sometimes get an unwelcome surprise. The company is a legitimate, active resident; the new revenue line is a perfectly real IT service; and yet that revenue is not automatically inside the regime, because it was never part of the approved project. Resident status covers the activities you declared, not the company in the abstract. Internalising that one point prevents most of the problems described below.
When a change requires amending your business project
Not every change to your business triggers a formal amendment, but a change to what you do almost always does. The clearest case is adding a new type of activity: a development company that starts building and licensing its own product, an outsourcing firm that launches a training arm, or a studio that decides to operate an exchange. Each introduces an activity that was not in the original project, so each needs that project updated and re-approved before the new work can be treated as qualifying. Getting the activity profile right at this stage matters as much as it did on entry, because different profiles carry different obligations and different tax outcomes inside the regime.
Amendments are also needed when the balance of your activities shifts materially — when a line that was a footnote in the original project becomes the bulk of your revenue, for example — or when the way you deliver an existing activity changes enough to alter how it should be classified. Running alongside all of this is a separate, standing obligation: residents must promptly notify the regulator of material changes to the company itself, including its ownership, its participants, and its management. These notifications are not the same as an activity amendment, but they follow the same principle. The regulator’s picture of your company is expected to stay current, and silence is treated as a problem rather than a neutral default.
What does not require a full amendment is ordinary commercial activity that stays comfortably within a category already approved in your project — winning new clients, entering new markets, shipping new features of the same product. The difficulty is the grey zone between “a new way of doing an approved activity” and “a genuinely new activity,” and that judgment is exactly where experienced advice earns its keep. The special tax and legal regime rewards companies that classify carefully and penalises those that assume generously, so when a change is ambiguous it is far safer to test it against the project before acting than to argue about it afterwards.
The amendment procedure, step by step
The mechanics of amending a business project mirror the admission process in miniature. The first step is an honest assessment of whether the new activity fits the permitted list at all. If it does not, no amendment will help, and the question becomes one of structuring the activity outside the regime — more on that below. If it does, the company prepares an updated business project that describes the new activity, justifies its place within the permitted categories, and shows that the company has the people, experience, and resources to carry it out. The regulator evaluates projects on substance rather than form, so a thin or purely formal description is a common cause of delay.
The updated project goes to the Secretariat, the operational body that processes applications, supports residents, and handles changes to projects day to day. The Secretariat reviews the submission for consistency with the regime, checks that the proposed activity genuinely falls within the permitted list, and may request further information or refer the project for scientific and technical expertise where the activity is novel or technically complex.
The decision itself rests with the Supervisory Board, which approves changes to residents’ projects just as it approves new admissions and, where necessary, terminations. In practice this ties an amendment to the Board’s schedule, so timing should be planned rather than assumed — a company that needs a new activity covered by a particular date should start well in advance. Once the Board approves the change, the amended project becomes the new benchmark, and the added activity is inside the regime from that point forward.
It helps to see where this sits in the wider system. Residents are registered by the HTP administration following a decision of the Supervisory Board, and since 2023 the Administration and the Secretariat have operated as a single management company — a change that also lengthened the standard review timelines for registration. Amendments follow the same institutional logic, and the practical lesson is consistent: the regulator’s approval is a step to complete before you rely on it, not a formality to sort out later.
How changing activities can cost you your residency
The danger here is rarely that a company is refused permission to add a legitimate IT activity. It is that the company does not ask permission at all — it simply starts the new activity and assumes the regime will follow. When that happens, the new revenue is not covered by the preferential treatment, because it was never in the approved project. At best that income is taxed under Belarus’s general rules; at worst, the gap between what the company declared and what it actually does is treated as a deviation from the regime — and persistent, unaddressed deviation is one of the recognised grounds for the Supervisory Board to review, and ultimately revoke, resident status.
A sharper version of the same problem appears when the new activity is not on the permitted list at all — trade in physical goods, manufacturing, or consumer services unrelated to technology. These cannot be brought into the regime by any amendment, and running them inside the resident entity without care muddies the whole compliance picture. The correct approach is to keep such activity firmly outside the regime, which in practice means separate accounting for the non-qualifying revenue and, often, a separate legal entity. A resident that blends qualifying and non-qualifying income without cleanly separating the two invites exactly the scrutiny that leads to trouble.
The remaining grounds for losing status are worth knowing because they compound the activity question. Falling short of the revenue-profiling requirements in the HTP Regulations can trigger penalties and revocation; giving the regulator inaccurate information is itself a violation; and unaddressed failures on anti-money-laundering and related obligations carry the most serious consequences of all. Voluntary withdrawal ends the status too, but it is the involuntary routes that catch companies unaware, and a business-model change handled carelessly can touch several of them at once.
The consequences of exclusion also reach backwards, not just forwards. Loss of status terminates the agreement on the terms of the resident’s activity and requires the resident certificate to be returned, and access to the regime ends from the date of exclusion. Depending on the circumstances, the tax authorities may reassess earlier periods and issue back-tax assessments calculated under the standard regime — which is why a mismatch that has quietly accumulated for months can become a far larger liability than the tax ever at stake on the new activity itself.
Changing activities without putting your status at risk
The safe path is straightforward in principle: treat a change of activity as a formal step to complete before you act, not a fact to reconcile afterwards. If you are planning a new product line, a pivot, or a new revenue stream, the sequence is to check it against the permitted list, amend the business project, wait for approval, and only then rely on the regime to cover it. That order costs a little time; the reverse order costs far more when it unravels.
Where an activity genuinely falls outside the regime, the answer is not to force it in but to build around it — isolating the non-qualifying work in its own accounting, and its own entity where the scale justifies it, so the resident company’s qualifying activity stays clean. And because the line between an approved activity and a new one is often finer than it looks, the ongoing work of managing an HTP resident — keeping the project current, classifying revenue correctly, and filing what the regulator expects — is what keeps a growing company on the right side of it. Handled well, changing what your company does is a routine amendment; handled by assumption, it is one of the most common ways residents put their status in jeopardy.
FAQ
Not if it was not in your approved business project. Being on the permitted list means the activity can be added — but it still has to be added, by amending the project and obtaining approval, before the revenue counts as qualifying. Starting first and amending later leaves a window in which that income sits outside the regime.
There is no single fixed figure, because it depends on the Supervisory Board’s schedule and on whether the activity needs technical expertise. Registration reviews were lengthened after the 2023 reorganisation, and amendments follow the same rhythm, so plan for a matter of weeks and begin before you need the new activity covered.
No. Ordinary growth within an already-approved activity — new clients, new markets, new features of the same product — does not require an amendment. What triggers the process is a genuinely new activity, a material shift in the balance of your activities, or a change in how an activity is delivered that alters its classification. Changes to ownership, participants, or management must be notified separately, even when they are not activity amendments.
Then it cannot be brought into the regime, and the goal shifts to keeping it cleanly outside — separate accounting, and usually a separate entity. Running non-qualifying activity such as trade or manufacturing inside the resident company is one of the quicker ways to attract scrutiny.
Not automatically, but drift is precisely what the regulator monitors for. The Secretariat tracks whether residents are carrying out their approved activities and refers significant deviations to the Supervisory Board, which has the power to revoke status. The risk grows the longer a mismatch goes unaddressed.
Adding an approved activity through a proper amendment does not disturb the treatment of your existing qualifying work. The real danger is the opposite situation — unapproved or non-qualifying activity sitting inside the entity — which can put the wider compliance picture, and therefore the benefits on everything, in question.
Conclusion
HTP residency rewards companies that treat it as a defined regime rather than a general privilege. Your status covers the activities in your approved business project, and nothing new follows automatically when your business changes. The good news is that the regime is built to accommodate change: adding a permitted activity is a manageable amendment, and keeping non-qualifying work outside the entity is routine practice. The failures come from assumption — starting a new activity before it is approved, or letting real operations drift from the project on file. If you are planning to change or expand what your company does, map the change against your business project and the permitted list before you commit, then get the amendment through before you rely on the benefit. In that order, a change of direction is a normal part of running an HTP resident — not a threat to the status that makes it worthwhile. If a change like this is on the horizon, get in touch: we can assess it against the regime, plan the timing, and take it through without putting your resident status at risk.