A completely rebuilt investment preference regime has applied in Kazakhstan since 1 January 2026. Law of the Republic of Kazakhstan No. 215-VIII of 18 July 2025 excluded articles 286, 287, 288, 289, 290, 295-1 and 295-3 from the Entrepreneurial Code and inserted a new block, articles 283-1 to 283-5, in their place. Investment preferences are now granted under one of three instruments only — an investment agreement, an investment obligations agreement or a simplified investment contract — and under one of them at a time. The tax side moved into chapter 81 of the new Tax Code No. 214-VIII, which took effect on the same day.

Three things in Hong Kong employment law moved at once in 2026. The continuous contract threshold fell from 18 hours a week to 17, with an alternative of 68 hours across four weeks. Offsetting of an employer’s mandatory MPF contributions against severance and long service payments has been abolished for service after 1 May 2025. And the statutory minimum wage has stood at HKD 43.1 an hour since 1 May 2026 — the first rate produced by a formula rather than settled by negotiation.

An employer in Hong Kong must enrol every employee aged 18 to 64 in a Mandatory Provident Fund scheme within the first 60 days of employment and remit monthly mandatory contributions of 5 per cent of relevant income from its own funds, plus 5 per cent deducted from the employee. The duty covers full-time and part-time employees alike. The regulator is the Mandatory Provident Fund Schemes Authority (MPFA).

The Personal Data (Privacy) Ordinance (Cap. 486) stands in 2026 substantially as it stood before the reform announced in January 2020: one of six proposed directions has been enacted. The Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data still cannot impose an administrative fine — every monetary penalty requires a conviction in court. Hong Kong has no mandatory breach notification duty. Artificial intelligence is governed not by statute but by guidance, none of which carries the status of a code of practice.

Every company incorporated in Hong Kong must keep a Significant Controllers Register (SCR) — an internal record of the individuals and legal entities that control the company. The register is neither published nor filed with the registry: it is held by the company and produced on demand to authorised officers. The requirement sits in the new Division 2A of Part 12 of the Companies Ordinance (Cap. 622) and has applied since 1 March 2018.

Hong Kong operates three separate capital-deduction mechanisms under profits tax: the enhanced deduction for research and development under section 16B and Schedule 45 (300% on the first HK$2,000,000 and 200% above it), the deduction for capital expenditure on acquiring intellectual property rights under sections 16E and 16EA (100% in one year for patent rights and know-how, five equal instalments over five years for six named rights), and the deduction for environmental facilities under section 16I (100% in the year the expenditure is incurred). These are three distinct regimes with different conditions, different prohibitions and different clawback rules on disposal.

Stamp duty on the transfer of Hong Kong stock is charged at an aggregate of 0.2% — 0.1% on each of the two contract notes — plus a fixed HKD 5 on the instrument of transfer. The charge is computed on the consideration or the value of the stock, whichever is higher. The governing statute is the Stamp Duty Ordinance (Cap. 117), Head 2 of the First Schedule, administered by the Stamp Office of the Inland Revenue Department.

Kazakhstan no longer grants any dividend relief based on how long a participation has been held. The rule that exempted dividends where the shares or participation interest had been held for more than three years applied until 31 December 2022, survived for three more years in reduced form as a 10% rate, and disappeared altogether on 1 January 2026 with the repeal of the old Tax Code. The statute now looks at the size of the holding rather than its duration: a participant holding at least 25% of the capital of a Kazakh LLP pays 5% on dividends up to 230,000 times the monthly calculation index per calendar year and 15% above that ceiling. Every other non-resident pays 15%, and a recipient registered in a listed preferential-tax jurisdiction pays 20% regardless of holding size or duration.

There are two fundamentally different ways to close a Hong Kong company. Deregistration is the simplified administrative route under section 750 of the Companies Ordinance (Cap. 622), available to a solvent company that has stopped trading and owes nothing. Winding up is a formal liquidation with an appointed liquidator under the Companies (Winding Up and Miscellaneous Provisions) Ordinance (Cap. 32), used where the company still holds assets, owes liabilities or is in dispute with creditors. The gate to the first route is a written Notice of No Objection from the Commissioner of Inland Revenue: without it the Companies Registry will not accept the application.

The 2026 payroll burden in Kazakhstan consists of three deductions from the employee's income — individual income tax (IIT), the mandatory pension contribution (OPV) and the medical insurance contribution (VOSMS) — and four charges borne by the employer: the employer pension contribution (OPVR) at 3.5%, social contributions at 5%, employer medical insurance deductions at 3% and social tax at 6%. Two statutory indicators run through every calculation: the monthly minimum wage (MZP) and the monthly calculation index (MCI).

Importing goods into Kazakhstan from a country outside the EAEU means the customs procedure of release for internal consumption, under which import duty, import VAT, excise and the customs fee are all paid before the goods are released — not after they are sold. The duty rate comes from the EAEU Common Customs Tariff as it stands on the day the declaration is registered, and import VAT is charged at 16% on the customs value increased by duty and excise. The declaration fee is a flat 6 MCI — KZT 25,950 in 2026 — whatever the consignment is worth.

Bringing goods into the UAE runs through two independent circuits: customs and tax. The customs circuit is run by the emirate — importer registration, the declaration, 5% duty on the CIF value. The tax circuit is run federally — 5% VAT on a base that includes the duty, with the option of not paying it at the border if the tax registration number is linked to the customs registration number. The two circuits meet at exactly one point, and that point is the one most often left unconfigured.

Since 1 January 2026 tax control in Kazakhstan has been governed by a new Tax Code — Code of the Republic of Kazakhstan No. 214-VIII of 18 July 2025, which replaced Code No. 120-VI of 25 December 2017. More than the article numbering changed: desk control no longer issues a “notice to remedy breaches” but a notice of discrepancies; tax control has been narrowed to tax audits alone; and the limitation period has split into three and five years by taxpayer category. The appeal architecture remains double and asymmetric: one notification may go either to the Ministry of Finance or straight to court, while every other notification passes through the general pre-court procedure of the Administrative Procedure Code.

Controlled foreign company rules are addressed not to the foreign company but to its Kazakhstan owner. The mechanism is that, where defined conditions are met, the profit of a foreign company is included in the taxable income of a Kazakhstan resident and taxed in Kazakhstan — even where no dividend has been distributed and the money has stayed abroad. The regime sits in Chapter 33 of the Tax Code of the Republic of Kazakhstan (Law No. 214-VIII of 18 July 2025), in force from 1 January 2026.

A natural person in the UAE pays corporate tax only where that person conducts a business and the gross turnover from that business exceeds AED 1,000,000 in a Gregorian calendar year. The threshold sits in Article 2(1) of Cabinet Decision No. 49 of 2023. Below it, no registration is required at all. Above it, the natural person becomes a Taxable Person and must register, keep records, file a return and pay tax at 9% on taxable income above AED 375,000.

Kazakhstan withholding tax is deducted by the Kazakhstan payer from a foreign company's income sourced in the Republic of Kazakhstan, with no deductions allowed. The headline rate is 20 per cent; dividends, royalties and interest carry 15 per cent; interest on loans and debt securities carries 10 per cent; international transport services carry 5 per cent. The framework from 1 January 2026 is Division 15 of the new Tax Code (Code of the Republic of Kazakhstan No. 214-VIII of 18 July 2025), articles 679 to 687 and chapter 75.

Closing a UAE company is not one procedure but three running in parallel: the corporate track (liquidation and licence cancellation), the tax track (deregistration with the Federal Tax Authority for corporate tax and VAT) and the immigration track (cancelling visas and the establishment card). The framework is set by Federal Decree-Law No. 32 of 2021 on Commercial Companies as amended by Federal Decree-Law No. 20 of 2025, Federal Decree-Law No. 47 of 2022 on Corporate Tax, Federal Decree-Law No. 8 of 2017 on VAT and Federal Decree-Law No. 28 of 2022 on Tax Procedures.

Liquidating a limited liability partnership in Kazakhstan runs on two parallel tracks: a corporate one, handled by the justice authorities and ending with the removal of the entry from the National Register of Business Identification Numbers, and a tax one, handled by the state revenue authorities and determining how long the whole exercise actually takes. The second track was rewritten in full with effect from 1 January 2026.

A trust or company service provider (TCSP) licence is mandatory in Hong Kong for anyone who, by way of business, provides other persons with a registered office, director or secretary services, a nominee shareholder or a trustee. The regime sits in Part 5A of the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorist Financing Ordinance (Cap. 615) and is administered by the Companies Registry. A licence runs for three years; at the end of June 2026 there were 7,412 licensees.

A family investment vehicle in Hong Kong is charged to profits tax at 0% where it is managed by an eligible single family office and the aggregate net asset value under that office’s management is at least HK$240,000,000. The legal basis is Schedule 16E to the Inland Revenue Ordinance (Cap. 112), inserted by Ord. No. 8 of 2023 and applying from the year of assessment commencing 1 April 2022. This is not an automatic exemption. It requires an irrevocable written election, annual satisfaction of quantitative thresholds, and at least two qualified full-time employees in Hong Kong.

An individual becomes a Kazakhstan tax resident on either of two independent grounds: permanent presence in the country of at least 183 calendar days in any consecutive 12-month period, or a centre of vital interests located in Kazakhstan. A resident pays Kazakhstan personal income tax on income from sources both inside and outside Kazakhstan. Declaration is a separate obligation: foreign accounts, foreign assets and digital assets go into forms 250.00 and 270.00 whether or not they produced any income.

The Protection of Critical Infrastructures (Computer Systems) Ordinance — Cap. 653 — is the first statute in Hong Kong’s history to impose binding cybersecurity obligations. It was passed by the Legislative Council on 19 March 2025, assented to on 27 March 2025, and brought into operation in its entirety on 1 January 2026. It does not reach every company: it reaches a narrow population of designated critical infrastructure operators across eight sectors, and imposes on them three categories of duty — organisational, preventive, and incident reporting and response.

The Law of the Republic of Kazakhstan “On Personal Data and Their Protection” of 21 May 2013 No. 94-V remains in force after the Digital Code took effect on 12 July 2026. The Digital Code neither repealed nor replaced it: the only act it repealed is the 2003 law on electronic documents and electronic digital signatures, and on personal data it refers expressly back to Law No. 94-V. The operative text of Law No. 94-V is the version in force as at 25 August 2026 — the day the largest amendment package in the statute’s history took effect.

A foreign company falls within UAE corporate tax on three independent grounds, set out in Article 11(4) of Federal Decree-Law No. 47 of 2022: having a permanent establishment in the UAE, deriving State Sourced Income, or having a nexus in the UAE as determined by Cabinet decision. None of these requires incorporating in the UAE, and none depends on the company's own choice — they arise from facts.

The permit to attract foreign labour is issued by the local executive body to the employer, not to the foreign worker, and without it an employment contract with a foreign national cannot be concluded. What governs entry is not an investment figure but the quota, the category of the position and the sector: in 2026 the fee for a single permit runs from 137 to 513 MRP — the monthly calculation index, the indexation unit used across Kazakhstani legislation — that is, from 592,525 to 2,218,725 tenge. A permit is valid only in the administrative-territorial units named in it and cannot be transferred to another employer.

Every company registered on the UAE mainland or in a commercial free zone must maintain a register of beneficial owners and a register of partners or shareholders, and file their data with the Registrar — the licensing authority of its own jurisdiction. The requirement sits in Cabinet Decision No. 109 of 2023 on Regulating the Beneficial Owner Procedures. A separate obligation, covering a different population, is registration on the Financial Intelligence Unit’s goAML platform: it applies to financial institutions, designated non-financial businesses and professions (DNFBPs) and virtual asset service providers.

An objection to a Hong Kong tax assessment must reach the Commissioner of Inland Revenue within one month after the date of the notice of assessment, and an appeal against the Commissioner’s determination must reach the Clerk to the Board of Review within one month after that determination is transmitted to the taxpayer. Both periods are set by the Inland Revenue Ordinance (Cap. 112) and both are hard deadlines, extendable only on a narrow set of grounds. Lodging an objection does not suspend the obligation to pay: Hong Kong runs a pay-first, argue-later system. Payment can be held over, but holding over is a discretion of the Commissioner, not an entitlement of the taxpayer.

Transfer pricing in Kazakhstan is governed by a standalone statute — Law of the Republic of Kazakhstan No. 67-IV of 5 July 2008 “On Transfer Pricing” — and not by the Tax Code. Three-tier reporting consists of the local file (form 013 МО), the master file (form 014 ОО) and the country-by-country report (form 012 МО), alongside the notification of participation in a multinational group (form 011 ЗУ). From 1 January 2026 the Law contains a new Article 10-2 on the accurate delineation of the controlled transaction and functional analysis — the most substantive change to the regime in years.

The employment contract in Kazakhstan is governed by Code of the Republic of Kazakhstan No. 414-V ZRK of 23 November 2015, the Labour Code of the Republic of Kazakhstan, in force since 1 January 2016 and, as at September 2026, not replaced by any new code. Ten amending laws touching the Code were adopted in 2026, and two of them reshaped hiring and dismissal directly: Law of the RK No. 277-VIII of 7 April 2026 (effective 8 June 2026) and Law of the RK No. 295-VIII of 3 June 2026 (effective 4 August 2026). A probationary period may not exceed three months, rising to six months for heads of organisations and their deputies, chief accountants and their deputies, and heads of branches and representative offices. Dismissal at the employer’s initiative is lawful only on one of the twenty-seven grounds listed in article 52(1) of the Code and only if the procedure in article 53 is followed.

Federal Decree-Law No. (11) of 2024 on the Reduction of Climate Change Effects requires all companies in the UAE, including those registered in free zones, to measure, report, and reduce Scope 1 and Scope 2 greenhouse gas emissions.

A branch and a representative office of a foreign company are not legal entities and undergo record registration (учётная регистрация) rather than state registration; an LLP is created as a separate legal entity and answers for its own obligations. The difference between the three forms runs along four lines: legal personality, tax regime, sector restrictions and exit procedure. The decisive fork is not the choice of legal form but the question of whether a permanent establishment arises — that is what determines whether corporate income tax becomes payable at all.