Crossroads Asia | Society | Central Asia

Tajikistan Taxes Tourism Trips Abroad to Fund Development at Home

The new rules would hit Tajikistan’s tourism companies while benefiting an affiliated state body.

Tajikistan has created a Tourism Development Fund financed in part by a payment of 5 percent of the sale value of tour packages sold to Tajik citizens travelling abroad. The resolution was adopted on July 1 but publicized only in late August.

The new rules open a dedicated account at the Ministry of Finance’s Central Treasury. Listed sources also include a per-day charge on foreign visitors’ packages, permit fees, fines, deposit income, and grants from international financial institutions. Spending is authorized by a 13-member council chaired by the head of the Committee for Tourism Development, alongside deputy ministers, agency heads, and one private sector representative.

For inbound visitors the charge is negligible: 0.2 of the annual calculation indicator per 24-hour period in hotels and 0.15 in guesthouses, or 15.6 and 11.7 somoni ($1.70 and $1.30) at the 2026 indicator of 78 somoni. The outbound payment is where the revenue is, and it reaches most of the tourism industry. Of 191 registered tourism companies, the committee counts 75 to 84 in inbound work and only around 30 active companies. Most of the remainder primarily arrange trips abroad for Tajik citizens.

Because the payment is calculated on the package’s sale price rather than the tourism agency’s commission, the tax is imposed on the transaction’s gross value, not the agency’s margin. On an illustrative 20,000 somoni package the payment is 1,000 somoni, roughly a third of the 3,194 somoni average monthly wage reported in June. Sellers will either absorb that fee, raise prices, or restructure sales. 

“We haven’t done final math on the implications of this new tax for us, but it is not a development we’re happy about,” the head of a well-established Dushanbe-based tourism company told The Diplomat on condition of anonymity. “Our margins are thin as it is and now we might have to rethink our entire business model.”

On the published wording the payment targets packages sold by tourism companies. If separately booked flights, hotel rooms, and insurance fall outside the definition of a taxable package, the rules could create an incentive to unbundle trips or shift bookings to foreign platforms,........

© The Diplomat