Access to Farfetch, the international online marketplace for branded clothing, has been restricted in Kazakhstan after the platform failed to comply with a tax notice, infohub.kz reports.
The State Revenue Committee of the Ministry of Finance said it is continuing systematic work to ensure that foreign internet platforms operating in Kazakhstan pay their taxes.
As a result of tax administration, Chinese company Pinduoduo transferred 6.8 billion tenge to the budget. In addition, Anthropic, PBC — the developer of the Claude artificial intelligence assistant — paid 1.2 billion tenge for previous tax periods. The company complied with the notices issued following a desk audit, the committee said.
"The legislation provides for the possibility of restricting access to the internet resources of foreign internet platforms if they fail to comply with the requirements of tax legislation. The committee sent a desk audit notice to the operator of the Farfetch platform, which is registered in the United Kingdom. Since the notice was not complied with, access to Farfetch's internet resource has been restricted in Kazakhstan," the State Revenue Committee said.
The committee added that such measures are applied in accordance with the procedure established by law to all foreign internet platforms that fall under the relevant requirements and fail to meet their tax obligations to Kazakhstan's budget.