How to hire and pay contractors in Kazakhstan

How a foreign company hires and pays a contractor in Kazakhstan

You sign a services contract with the person, they deliver tasks, invoice or record the income, and you pay them into a Kazakh bank account or a wallet. A company with no presence in Kazakhstan does not register there, run payroll or withhold Kazakh income tax for a genuine contractor.

The contract has to buy a result or a service, not a job. Data labeling fits that well when contributors choose their tasks and are paid per accepted task. With Toku as contractor of record, Toku is the party that contracts with each contributor, collects their invoices and pays them, and your company buys the labeled data from Toku.

Contractor or employee: the Labour Code test

The Labour Code defines an employment contract as an agreement where the person performs a labour function personally, follows the employer's work schedule and internal rules, and receives wages (art. 1(1)(36)). Article 27 lists the features that mark employment: work in a set qualification, specialty, profession or position, personal performance while subject to the labour regulations, and wages for labour.

Since the June 2026 revision, article 26(1-1) bans a civil contract with an individual that contains even one of those features, and treats it as an employment contract whatever the parties called it. That is stricter than a balancing test, so draft carefully.

• Buy a defined result or service, such as accepted labeling tasks, and pay a fee per task rather than a salary.
• Give no job title, position or fixed hours, and don't subject the person to your internal labour regulations.
• Let contributors accept or decline tasks and work with other clients.
• Per-task pay alone does not make someone a contractor, so check how the program runs day to day, not only the contract wording.

Tax registration, invoices and the records you keep

A new Tax Code has applied since 1 January 2026, and the article numbers below are from it. Every individual already has an individual identification number (IIN). A person who works as an individual entrepreneur registers by notifying the tax authority that they are starting business (art. 97).

A non-resident company is a tax agent for individual income tax only if it works in Kazakhstan through a permanent establishment or a registered unit (art. 361). So when a foreign company pays a Kazakh contractor, the contractor reports and pays the tax: an individual who is not an entrepreneur self-assesses the income (arts. 405 and 407) and files a declaration by 15 September of the following year (art. 418).

Individual entrepreneurs with annual income up to 600,000 monthly calculation indexes can use the simplified declaration regime at 4% income tax, which local councils may adjust by up to half (art. 716). A separate self-employed regime (0% income tax and 4% social payments) is limited to activities on a Government list, so the contractor should check that their service is on it.

What you keep as the payer: the signed contract, the contractor's IIN or entrepreneur registration, their invoices or app receipts, the accepted-task records behind each payment and proof of payment. Toku keeps these records for every contributor it contracts.

Payment rails, tenge and currency rules

Payments between residents and non-residents can be made in tenge or foreign currency, and operations the Law on Currency Regulation and Currency Control does not restrict are free (art. 6). Bank payments run through authorised banks, and residents can open accounts in tenge or foreign currency in Kazakhstan without restriction (arts. 7 and 8).

The Law counts services a resident provides to a non-resident as export, and residents must bring the proceeds into an account at an authorised bank within the term in the contract (arts. 1 and 9). Under the National Bank's export-import currency control rules, contracts above USD 50,000 get an account number at the bank, but that regime applies to companies, branches and individual entrepreneurs (paras. 2(7) and 10).

In practice: pay contributors in tenge or US dollars to their own bank account in Kazakhstan, state the payment term in the contract, and keep the contract and invoices so the bank can match each incoming payment to its service.

Paying contractors in Kazakhstan in stablecoins

Yes, contractors in Kazakhstan can be paid in stablecoins with Toku. Each contributor can choose USDC or USDT to their own wallet instead of a bank transfer.

Kazakhstan regulates crypto under the Law on Digital Assets. Crypto that is not issued under that law, which in practice includes widely used stablecoins, is not recognised as a means of payment in Kazakhstan, and buying, selling or exchanging it is allowed through operators licensed or registered by the National Bank and through exchanges licensed in the Astana International Financial Centre (art. 12-1). The law does not bar an individual from receiving it, and the Tax Code treats digital assets received as payment as income (art. 389).

Amendments in 2026 added money-backed stablecoins issued under National Bank rules, and the rules are still settling, so Toku confirms the payout route for each person. To set it up, talk to us about paying in stablecoins in Kazakhstan.

Making the IP transfer valid in Kazakhstan

Under the Law on Copyright and Related Rights, a transfer of economic rights must be in a written contract signed by the author and the company receiving the rights (art. 31(1)). Under the Civil Code, a foreign economic transaction without simple written form is void (art. 153(3)).

Electronic signing works with an electronic digital signature verified by a certification authority accredited in Kazakhstan, such as the National Certification Centre used for eGov. The Digital Code gives that signature the same force as a handwritten one (art. 49(2)). A click or an SMS code is a weaker record, so use the digital signature or wet ink.

• List every use: reproduction, modification, dataset compilation, AI and ML training and sublicensing. Rights not expressly transferred stay with the author (art. 32(4)), and rights to uses unknown at signing cannot be transferred (art. 32(5)).
• State territory and term: with no territory the transfer covers Kazakhstan only (art. 32(3)), and with no term the author can end it after one year on three months' notice (art. 32(2)).
• Make it exclusive in writing: rights are non-exclusive unless the contract says otherwise (art. 31(4)), and onward transfer needs express permission (art. 32(7)).
• Set the fee: remuneration for each use, or the method for working it out, is required content (art. 32(1)). For future tasks, use a commission contract that provides for the transfer (art. 33).
• Moral rights stay with the author and cannot be assigned (art. 15), so the contract should say how the work may be edited and whether it is credited.

Pay data labelers in Kazakhstan with Toku

Toku Contributor Payouts contracts each labeler in Kazakhstan as contractor or agent of record, signs the copyright transfer with the signature Kazakh law accepts and pays per accepted task in tenge, US dollars, USDC or USDT. You send task totals through the mass payouts API or a file, and every payment links to its contributor, agreement and tasks.

Toku pays contractors in 100+ countries. Contractor management lists at $19 per contractor per month on the pricing page, and Contributor Payouts is priced on the contributors you actually pay. The API is documented at docs.toku.com.