The Kabylan taxi drivers’ union has asked parliament to stop taxing bonuses that the ride apps pay drivers. Ulanbek Cholponbaev, its chairman, put the request at hearings of the Jogorku Kenesh on 12 October.
He said that since 1 September 2025 a driver has paid 1 per cent tax on each completed job and 1 per cent to the Social Fund. The apps also pay bonuses for completing a set number of jobs. He said the state withholds 4 per cent from taxi fleets, and that thousands of drivers are being taxed on money paid as a reward for the work. He called that unfair, and asked officials and members of parliament to look at it.
By his figures, taxi workers have paid more than 400 million som in tax this year. At the National Bank rate of 115.7794 som to the pound, set on 10 October and still the weekly rate, 400 million som is £3,454,846.
Kabylan is a trade union. It was registered on 28 May 2025, and Cholponbaev is its head.
What the tax service told parliament
The same day, Kubanychbek Ysabayev, deputy chairman of the State Tax Service, told parliament about the money coming in under the new rules. [Economist](https://economist.kg/biznes/2026/10/12/yandex-kyrgyzstan-nalogi-7-mesyatsev/) reported his figures. Yandex Go has acted as the tax agent since 1 September 2025, taking the tax and insurance contributions off each job. He said 1 per cent of the fare, depending on the type of work, goes towards the driver’s pension.
He said Yandex Kyrgyzstan had passed on about 470 million som for taxi drivers and couriers in seven months of 2026, about £4,059,444, and had paid more than 1 billion som in tax on its own income, more than £8,637,115. About 110,000 people are now officially registered in taxi and courier work. He said that when drivers were on a patent, the take was about 40 million som, about £345,485.
Those are not the same figures as the union’s. His 400 million som is his total for taxi workers this year. The tax service total includes couriers, and it includes both the tax and the social payment.
On 28 September Ysabayev had given a committee a split for all the apps, not only Yandex. Over seven months they had passed on 231 million som in tax at 1 per cent, and 231 million som to the Social Fund, also at 1 per cent. That is 462 million som, £3,990,347. He said this was on top of the tax the companies pay themselves. Yandex’s own tax bill for those seven months was 1 billion 15 million som, £8,766,672.
The day before the hearings, Yandex Go had a major outage. MP Dastan Bekeshev said it showed how far taxi and delivery work in the country depends on one app.