GTA 6 VAT may bypass Kazakhstan despite empty Take-Two tax row

Ten days before the November 19 release of GTA 6 for PS5 and Xbox Series X/S, Kazakhstan’s State Revenue Committee register showed no Take-Two VAT payment for the first two quarters of 2026. The blank entry did not establish tax avoidance, since a platform may collect the tax when it completes a digital sale in Kazakhstan.

What does Kazakhstan’s tax register show?

The document is titled “List of foreign companies engaged in electronic commerce of goods and the provision of services in electronic form to individuals.” It contains 144 companies and a VAT table divided into quarters of 2026.

Take-Two Interactive Software UK Limited entered the register on January 29, 2025 as a foreign supplier of electronic services. No tax amounts appeared alongside its name.

Published payments provide several comparisons:

• Valve paid 5.50bn tenge in Q1 and 5.71bn in Q2, or 11.21bn for the half-year. The register also showed 5.47bn for Q3.
• Sony Interactive Entertainment Network Europe paid 59.6m tenge in Q1, 8.6m in Q2 and 8.3m in Q3. Its H1 total was 68.2m, and its registration dated to August 19, 2024.
• Microsoft Ireland Operations paid 51.9m and 46.8m tenge across the first two quarters, for a total of 98.7m. It registered on September 3, 2025.

Why does an empty Take-Two row not prove evasion?

Take-Two games usually reach buyers through PlayStation Store, Microsoft Store and Steam. Under the “Google tax,” the company trading with a Kazakh buyer pays the VAT, not the publisher. The storefront therefore carries the remittance when it completes the sale.

Take-Two could also sell directly to Kazakh consumers through its own services, such as in-game purchases and the Rockstar store. Those transactions may fall under the “Google tax,” but the register does not say whether any occurred.

How much VAT could each preorder generate?

The GTA 6 preorder costs $79.99, equivalent to about 38,000 tenge. At the 16% VAT rate, that implies roughly 5,200 tenge per copy when a Kazakhstan-registered platform handles the transaction.

This is a conditional yield, not a forecast of Kazakhstan’s revenue. The calculation does not account for local sales volume or establish that platform-registered purchases have occurred.

Why may Kazakhstan collect little from PlayStation sales?

PlayStation Store remains closed to Kazakh buyers, and players commonly use the Ukrainian or Turkish region. In those cases, the tax does not enter Kazakhstan’s budget. GTA 6 also has no Steam release scheduled at present.

Kazakh buyers still find payments difficult, and Sony has not solved the issue. Officials’ promises point to easing by the end of Q1 2027, but that timetable remains a promise rather than current access. Related coverage explains how to create a PSN account for a Kazakhstan purchase.

How large is the global preorder book?

Sensor Tower estimates that GTA VI digital preorders reached 7.71 million copies. Players added about 790,000 preorders in the past week, while estimated revenue from preorders stood at $751m.

Of that total, about $559m came from PlayStation and about $192m from Xbox. Those figures do not show how many of the sales Kazakhstan taxed or how much VAT entered the national budget.

The records support a narrow conclusion: platform remittances can reach billions of tenge, while Take-Two has no entry for H1 2026. They do not establish a specific GTA 6 tax loss because the storefront and regional route determine where VAT goes.

Without a Kazakhstan-registered platform handling the sale, the country may receive no VAT from that transaction, regardless of global preorder scale. The evidence supports a question about collection, not a verdict on Take-Two’s compliance.