Amendments made to Tax Procedural Law with Law No. 7318

New developments

Several amendments have been made to Tax Procedural Law No. 213 (“ TPL “) with Law No. 7318 on Certain Amendments to the Tax Procedural Law and to Certain Laws (“ Law No. 7318 “), which was published in the Official Gazette dated 30 April 2021.

What do the amendments mean?

The amendments made to the TPL with Law No. 7318 are as follows, in brief:

• With the amendment to Article 359 of the TPL, related to tax fraud crimes and penalties, the following have been regulated as a tax fraud crime:
  • preventing the recording of fiscal information and documents as to the sales, by physically or electronically interfering with cash register devices without being authorized by the Ministry of Treasury and Finance
  • changing or deleting the information recorded in the cash register devices
  • preventing the transfer of the document, information or data that should be transferred electronically to the Ministry of Treasury and Finance or other public institutions or organizations through cash register devices or other related equipment, systems or electronic control or audit systems or other related systems, which are set up to prevent unrecorded sales; or causing the transfer of them inaccurately

Any taxpayer committing these crimes will be imprisoned for three to five years.

If tax inspectors or assistant tax inspectors determine during a tax audit that these crimes have been committed, they will prepare a report on the matter and share it with the Office of Chief Public Prosecutor with the opinion of the report evaluation committee. If tax inspectors or assistant tax inspectors learn in other ways that these crimes have been committed, they will prepare a report on the matter and share it with the Office of Chief Public Prosecutor with the opinion of the Report Evaluation Committee without initiating any tax audit.

• According to Article 231/5 of the TPL, invoices should be issued within seven days following the delivery of the goods or provision of the services. With the sentence added to the same article with Law No. 7318, the Ministry of Treasury and Finance has been authorized to make changes to the period to issue ivoices by considering the type or fee of the goods or services, activity field, industry or liability type, etc.
• With the paragraph added to Duplicated Article 257 of the TPL, the Ministry of Treasury and Finance has been authorized to regulate a warranty obligation for those carrying out activities subject to the oil/LPG market or electricity market licenses or those who are obliged to use banderol, stamp, barcode, hologram, clipping, marks, symbol, etc. If the warranty obligation is not complied with, a special irregularity fine will be imposed at 0.3% of the gross sales in the previous accounting period. This fine cannot be lower than 10 times the amount in the first subparagraph of the first paragraph of Duplicated Article of the TPL (i.e., it cannot be lower than 10 times of TRY 2,500 for 2021) and cannot be higher than TRY 10 million.

Law No. 7318 entered into effect on the publishing date (30 April 2021).

Conclusion

We believe that the amendments made by Law No. 7318, especially those related to tax fraud crimes, are quite important among the other amendments. These matters should be monitored in order to avoid imprisonment.