16:24 - 29.01.2026

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January 29, Fineko/abc.az. The period of income tax benefits with a startup certificate in Azerbaijan should be reviewed.

ABC.AZ informs that this is stated in the report of the American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham) titled "White Paper 2025".

According to the document, currently the possibility of exemption from income tax with a startup certificate applies only to enterprises belonging to the category of micro and small enterprises: "For this reason, companies with turnover of over 3 million manats are automatically excluded from the preferential treatment. This policy does not take into account modern innovative business models - aggregators, platforms and resellers. Startups operating as aggregators, platforms, or mediators (for example, reselling the services of several suppliers) are actually penalized for unconventional business models due to their high gross turnover. In such models, the significant turnover (“gross sales”) accumulated by a startup is almost immediately transferred to suppliers, and company's real income consists only of the commission or service fee received. In addition, despite the high turnover, most startups created from scratch do not make a profit, since all the income they receive is reinvested in growth, scaling, and human capital development. In this context, income tax benefits within the startup certificate do not provide real benefits for startups with high growth rates but no profit. Startups with high growth potential, as a rule, deliberately work without profit for 5-10 years, directing investments in technologies and expanding market share. This means that until the expiration of the tax benefit, the company actually has no profit, and the benefit cannot be applied in practice. As a result, the mechanism loses its effectiveness, and startups and their founders actually take a wait-and-see attitude in order to be able to take advantage of tax breaks."