Law firm Juscutum, in partnership with Diia.City Union, presented a comparative study of global jurisdictions for IT companies at the 2U Tech Forum. The analysis covers Ukraine, Poland, Estonia, Cyprus, the UAE, and India, illustrating how different countries compete for technology businesses, talent, and investment.
The study’s central finding is that the IT sector is one of the state’s key strategic assets, and regulatory stability has become a decisive factor in the global competition for technology capital.
Ukraine’s IT industry currently generates over $6 billion in foreign currency revenue annually, employs more than 300,000 specialists, and accounts for 11–13% of the country’s total export of goods and services. The sector’s share of services exports exceeds 37%.
The Diia.City legal regime remains one of the industry’s primary support mechanisms. It currently hosts over 4,300 resident companies employing approximately 169,000 specialists. Key benefits include a 9% distributed profit tax, a payroll tax burden of around 12%, the availability of gig contracts, venture capital instruments, and a 25-year government guarantee of stable conditions.
According to the research, jurisdictions worldwide are actively competing for technology businesses by offering their own relocation incentives. Poland has implemented the Poland Business Harbour programme along with R&D tax incentives and special regimes for innovative companies. Estonia continues to develop one of Europe’s strongest digital ecosystems, with a tax model under which corporate tax is due only upon profit distribution. Cyprus remains a popular jurisdiction for international IT structures owing to its low tax burden and IP Box regime. The UAE offers some of the world’s most attractive conditions for international business through special economic zones and minimal taxation. India, meanwhile, continues to expand its role as one of the largest IT hubs globally.
The authors emphasise that technology businesses are highly mobile. Currently, around 20% of Ukrainian IT specialists work abroad, and 54% of Ukrainian IT companies have offices in other countries. Remote-first models, the global nature of the market, and team mobility create an environment in which companies can relocate their jurisdiction relatively quickly.
We regularly advise on international structuring projects and Ukrainian companies entering global markets, so we see first-hand how states compete for technology business. Today, IT companies assess jurisdictions on a range of criteria: tax burden, access to development tools, investment protection, and regulatory predictability. That is precisely why maintaining the stable conditions and core principles of Diia.City is of strategic importance to Ukraine’s economic and technological resilience,
said Iryna Biliaeva, Managing Partner and CEO of Juscutum.
Despite the tax incentives on offer elsewhere, we see that Diia.City, in its current format and with its existing tax rates, remains a competitive environment in terms of labour taxation. The regime provides legal guarantees, intellectual property protection, and investment instruments familiar to international venture funds. Fostering a systematic dialogue between the state and the technology industry, and safeguarding the core principles of Diia.City and the interests of its residents, is the central mission of Diia.City Union,
said Valeria Kushnеrchuk, Executive Director of Diia.City Union.
The authors warn that any revision or cancellation of the stability guarantees could trigger a so-called “waterfall effect”: an outflow of companies and specialists, a decline in tax revenues, reduced investment activity, and a weakening of the country’s technological potential.
In 2025 alone, Diia.City residents paid over UAH 34.6 billion in taxes. Preserving the regime’s competitive advantages is therefore consequential not only for the IT industry, but for Ukraine’s broader economic and technological resilience.
The full comparative analysis of global jurisdictions for IT companies is available at: https://tinyurl.com/6tpfb5z
