What is happening
Following reports about the new tax regime, some traders in markets and shops have moved to "cash only". The reaction is understandable — phrases like "automatic debiting" sound unfamiliar. We read the source document — Order №1/06 of the Agency for Innovation and Digital Technologies dated 1 April 2026 — and explain calmly what is worth worrying about, what is true, and what to do.
Why switching to cash is a losing strategy
First, you hand your customers to competitors. Under the pilot, anyone paying via a wallet or QR code receives 1% cashback — real money that is not itself taxed. Customers will quickly start choosing places where they can pay by phone. A "cash only" trader will lose customers every day.
Second, cash does not return you to invisibility — it no longer exists. Market and shopping-centre administrations are already required to report quarterly to the tax authorities on every trader: location, row, floor area, service fees. The inspector already knows your spot. The question is not whether you are seen, but on what terms you operate once you are.
Third, by refusing the pilot you refuse its protection. Staying on the old regime means staying with the old rules: reporting, ordinary inspections, penalties. Pilot participants receive what the old system does not offer: scheduled inspections are suspended for the entire duration of the project, and that period is not subject to inspection even after it ends. Several provisions of the Code of Administrative Offences are also suspended. The only surviving control is a test purchase to verify that receipts are issued.
Honestly about transparency
We will not overpromise: yes, a participant's wallet is linked to their taxpayer number, and turnover becomes visible to the system. The Procedure requires operators to ensure the confidentiality of data, and inspections of the system itself are limited by banking law; the Agency for Innovation, in its clarification of 15 May, also confirmed that private transfers between citizens are not taxed. That is what is written and stated. But the main point is different: transparency in the economy arrives regardless, with or without your participation. The pilot is a chance to enter it on known terms — a fixed 3%, automatic calculation, a moratorium on inspections — rather than in uncertainty.
Five steps to prepare
1. Separate your wallets. Keep one wallet for trade and a personal one for family. Tax applies to any funds arriving in the business wallet, so receive transfers from relatives only on the personal one. An ordinary transfer not marked by the sender as commercial is not taxed.
2. Check whose name the working wallet is under. It should be in your name — not your brother's, your wife's, or your son's "with higher limits". You do not link the wallet to a taxpayer number yourself: the system links it automatically from your bank's data. This means all taxes, thresholds and any registration as an entrepreneur follow the wallet's owner — not whoever actually uses it. Also make sure your passport details at the bank are current.
3. Set up a cash register. Using a cash register is mandatory, but no hardware purchase is required: a virtual cash register — a smartphone application — is permitted.
4. Check your access to the taxpayer's personal cabinet. A completed declaration will appear there by the 15th of each month, and employee data is entered there too.
5. Settle prior obligations. Taxes assessed before joining are paid under the previous rules — reconcile with the tax authority before switching.
Is it worth it for you
It depends on your regime, your payment method and your turnover — there is no universal answer. We built an anonymous calculator — no name, no taxpayer number, no registration; the calculation runs on your own device. A quick version is at tajiklaw.ai/calc; a detailed one, with references to clauses of the Procedure, at tajiklaw.ai/3percent. For questions not covered here, Moní will answer with a reference to the specific clause.
Some questions on applying the regime we submitted to the Agency for Innovation and the Tax Committee — on the confirmed start date, the counting of wallets and the fate of the patent. The answers have been received, and we have analysed them in separate materials at tajiklaw.ai.
This is legal information, not legal advice. For significant decisions, consult a specialist.