Uzbekistan Tightens Tax Oversight of Social Media Bloggers

Tashkent, Uzbekistan (UzDaily.com) — Uzbekistan’s Tax Committee held a meeting with representatives of the blogging community to discuss taxation of income from advertising activities and the alignment of participants’ legal status with their actual economic activity in the digital space.

According to the committee, a list of 110 of the most active bloggers was compiled for analysis. The review found that 55 were registered as self-employed individuals, 33 as individual entrepreneurs, and 22 operated as private individuals. The Tax Committee said this structure indicates a discrepancy between the actual nature of their activities and their chosen registration status.

The activity of six of the largest bloggers was examined separately, each of whom has an audience exceeding three million followers. According to the data presented, they published 360 stories and 184 advertising posts in 2025. The average frequency of story postings was about five per month.

Based on electronic invoice data, the total income of this group of bloggers in 2025 was estimated at 2.7 billion Uzbek soums, while 110.4 million soums in taxes were paid to the state budget.

During the meeting, Tax Committee representatives explained current rules governing taxation of advertising income on social networks. It was also emphasized that self-employed status does not allow the hiring of employees, while in some cases bloggers are reported to employ administrators and assistants.

Participants were given responses to their questions, and the possibility of organizing training sessions to improve tax literacy in the digital sector was discussed. The committee said it sees a need to bring bloggers’ activities into full compliance with tax legislation and to increase transparency of their income.