Back-Office Hiring for HTP Residents: Accountants, Lawyers, and HR Who Know the Regime

A familiar story: a company joins the Hi-Tech Park and hires a solid accountant with ten years at a construction firm. For a quarter or two, everything looks fine. Then someone pays a Polish contractor without withholding tax, and it only comes up months later during a review. Nobody was careless. The accountant simply knew a different set of rules.

HTP companies run into this more often than they’d like. The regime is generous, but it has its own logic, and most of that logic lands on people outside engineering. Accountants handle the tax side, lawyers deal with contracts and equity, and HR takes care of hiring and offers.

Below, we go through each role: what they should already know, what to ask in an interview, and when outsourcing makes more sense.

Why a strong generalist often isn’t enough

Legally, the Hi-Tech Park is a set of rules rather than a place. Decree No. 8 extended it to January 1, 2049 and widened it well beyond software, to AI, tokens and dozens of other activities. The full legal framework is on the Park’s official website.

Residents get tax breaks and access to contract types most Belarusian companies can’t use. In return, they report to the Park administration and have to stay within the list of approved activities. Someone who has spent a career in manufacturing or retail accounting will get the hang of it eventually. You just pay for the learning curve, and you carry the risk of whatever slips through in the meantime.

One question we find useful when screening: would this person catch an HTP-specific problem on their own, before anyone points it out? If you’re not sure, keep asking.

Accountants

Mistakes here cost money soonest, so it makes sense to start with this role.

Exemptions have edges

Residents don’t pay corporate profits tax, and sales of software, IT services and IP rights are exempt from VAT. That only applies to activities on the approved list, though. Income from anything else, like subletting spare office space or reselling hardware, is taxed the normal way. An accountant who has worked at a resident will keep these apart from the start instead of untangling them at year end.

Paying foreign companies

This is where newcomers slip most often. When a resident pays a foreign licensor, contractor or parent company, it usually acts as a tax agent and has to withhold.

Treaties add another layer right now. Belarus has suspended key parts of its double tax treaties with 27 countries, among them the EU states, the US and the UK, until the end of 2026. Ask a candidate what they expect to happen on January 1, 2027. A good one will have thought through both scenarios.

Payroll

HTP employees used to pay 9% income tax. That rose to 13% in 2021 and has been extended a few times since. The current extension, confirmed by the Ministry of Taxes and Duties, covers January 1, 2025 to January 1, 2028. HTP staff also don’t fall under the 25% rate for very high incomes. Generalists often don’t know that one.

Then there are dollar-pegged salaries paid in rubles, which make every payroll run a bit fiddlier. Some residents would rather not keep this in-house at all and use outsourced payroll in Belarus instead.

Reporting to the Park

Every quarter, residents pay the Park 1% of their revenue, and they file regular reports with the administration. The regime also lets them use simplified primary documents. None of this is hard, but the deadlines and formats are easy to get wrong if you’ve never done them before.

Questions we’d ask an HTP accountant

• How do you keep HTP and non-HTP income apart in the books?
• A foreign contractor sends an invoice. What happens next, step by step?
• If the treaty suspension ends after 2026, what changes for us?
• How is the quarterly Park deduction calculated, and where does it get reported?
• Tell me about an inspection you went through at a resident. What did they focus on?

Lawyers

Decree No. 8 brought in a set of tools from English law: option agreements, convertible loans, non-competes, non-solicitation clauses and liquidated damages. Investors and senior hires expect to see them. Lawyers who haven’t used them tend to go one of two ways. Some draft so cautiously that the clause has no teeth. Others copy a foreign template that doesn’t fit Belarusian law.

What the work looks like day to day

Most of an HTP lawyer’s time goes to a handful of areas. Equity is a big one: option plans for key people, convertible loans from investors, shareholder agreements. IP is another, because the company needs to actually own its code, whether an employee or a contractor wrote it. Client contracts with foreign companies now involve sanctions checks, payment routing and a careful choice of governing law. And if the company works with tokens, that’s a separate body of regulation.

Share sales have their own procedure, too. Since 2023, the Secretariat of the HTP Supervisory Board has to be notified 10 business days before a share sale agreement takes effect. For background, Rödl & Partner wrote up the 2023 changes in plain English.

In-house, or a firm on retainer?

For a young resident, an outside firm is usually enough. A few Minsk firms do a lot of HTP work. The math changes once you’re raising money, running an option plan or signing client contracts every week. At that point, waiting days for outside counsel to get up to speed starts to slow the business down.

Questions we’d ask an HTP lawyer

• What would you put in a non-compete for a senior engineer so it actually holds up?
• How would you set up an option plan at a Belarusian resident?
• We want to sell a 10% stake. Walk me through the process.

HR

At plenty of Belarusian companies, HR is mostly paperwork: leave requests, employment records, timesheets. At a resident, the job is wider.

Foreign hires

Decree No. 8 simplified the permit process for foreign specialists at residents, and founders and employees can stay in Belarus visa-free for up to 180 days. The Wikipedia article on the decree gives a good overview of what changed. HR handles the practical side: registration, documents, and what a new hire needs in hand when they land in Minsk.

Contracts

By law, employment contracts are in Russian or Belarusian. At a resident, the same contract might also include a non-compete, an IP assignment and a reference to the option plan. So HR and legal need to draft it together, not pass it back and forth.

Getting offers accepted

Pay has to be in rubles, but developers quote their expectations in dollars. We’ve written separately about how to word USD-linked salary offers so both sides know where they stand.

HTP status helps with hiring as well. Candidates tend to read it as a sign that the company is stable and the contract will look familiar. How much weight they actually give it is covered in our piece on whether candidates prefer HTP employers.

Questions we’d ask an HR candidate

• What does onboarding look like for a foreign developer at a resident?
• How would you explain a non-compete to a candidate who’s nervous about signing one?
• How do you set up a ruble salary tied to the dollar rate?

Where these people come from

As of 2023, the Park had roughly 1,000 residents, according to Wikipedia. Most candidates with genuine HTP back-office experience come from:

• finance and legal teams at other residents, ideally larger ones that have been through audits;
• law and advisory firms with an IT practice;
• outsourced accounting firms whose clients are mostly residents.

“HTP experience” on a CV can mean a lot of things. A year of running payroll for a 15-person resident is useful, but it isn’t the same as three years of handling withholding and Park reporting for a company of 300. Ask about company size, how long they were there, and what exactly they were responsible for.

Good candidates also tend to have more than one offer on the table, so a slow process will cost you people.

Warning signs

None of these should rule someone out on its own, but each one deserves a follow-up question:

• They get vague when you ask when the company acts as a tax agent.
• They still mention a 9% income tax rate for HTP staff.
• They say they “worked at an HTP company” but can’t name anything regime-specific they did, like preparing the quarterly reports.
• A lawyer who has never actually drafted an option agreement or a non-compete.

A short test task often tells you more than the interview itself. Give an accountant a sample contractor invoice, or give a lawyer a draft non-compete, and see what they flag.

In-house, outsourced, or a mix

It mostly comes down to your size, how fast you’re growing, and how much you want to control directly.

Model	Works well for	Upside	Downside
In-house team	Residents with 50+ staff or a steady flow of deals	People who know the company and answer fast	Higher fixed costs; roles take a while to fill
Outsourced firm	Early-stage or small residents	Specialists from day one, predictable fees	Less context; you’re one client among many
EOR or PEO	Foreign companies testing Belarus before joining the Park	Quick start, no local entity needed	Staff aren’t on a resident’s payroll, so HTP benefits don’t apply
Hybrid	Growing residents	An in-house lead, with outside help on complex work	Someone has to own the split of responsibilities

A common path for foreign companies is to start with an Employer of Record in Belarus, hire the first few people that way, and set up their own entity once the team grows.

Joining the Park usually comes next. Our HTP entry support covers the application and what the administration looks for.

Once you’re in, the question becomes which roles to bring in-house and in what order. Our HR consulting team can help you work that out.

FAQ

Can a general accountant learn the HTP regime quickly?

The basics, yes, usually within a few months. The risk is what happens before then, mainly with withholding tax and keeping HTP and non-HTP income separate. If you do hire a generalist, it helps to pair them with an experienced advisor for the first year.

Do HTP residents need an in-house lawyer?

Not necessarily. Smaller residents usually get by fine with outside counsel. An in-house lawyer starts to pay off once you have an option plan, investors, or a steady stream of client contracts.

What income tax do HTP employees pay in 2026?

13%. That rate applies from January 1, 2025 to January 1, 2028, and HTP staff aren’t subject to the 25% rate on very high incomes. Belarusian tax rules change often, so it’s worth double-checking with your accountant.

Can HTP residents hire foreign back-office staff?

Yes, and the permit process is simpler than for ordinary Belarusian companies. That said, back-office roles usually call for fluent Russian and a good grasp of Belarusian law, so most residents end up hiring locally.

Can back-office specialists work remotely for an HTP resident?

Yes, and plenty do. Just make sure the remote work arrangement is written into the employment contract, which Belarusian labor law requires.

How long does it take to hire an HTP accountant or lawyer?

It depends on seniority and how niche the role is. People with real HTP experience are in demand and often weigh several offers at once, so moving quickly and keeping the process organized helps a lot.

What to take away

HTP status is valuable, and keeping it is mostly the back office’s job. Look for regime experience first. Test it with real tasks, not just questions. And if the right person isn’t available yet, outsource for now rather than hiring a generalist and hoping they pick it up.

Looking for an accountant, lawyer or HR lead who has done this before? Get in touch and tell us about the role. We’ll come back with candidates we’ve already screened for HTP experience.