COVID 19: Turkey Postponed Tax Related Duties Due to Force Majeure

Due to the COVID-19 outbreak, Turkey has taken serious measures and made several changes in certain legislations., Restaurants, patisseries, cafes, cafeterias and similar food servicing places are only allowed between 10.00-20.00 and limited to  “take-away” or "come-and-take" services only and all stores are closed during the weekend curfew except for the stores devoted to basic needs.

As per the General Communiqué of the Tax Procedure Law (“Communiqué”) published by the Ministry of Treasury and Finance (“Ministry”), the taxpayers operating in the sectors where their activities are temporarily suspended or completely stopped within the scope of the measures taken regarding the COVID-19 outbreak, are to benefit from the force majeure provisions of the Tax Procedure Law No. 213 (“Law”) since COVID-19 is accepted as force majeure. The Law provides that in the event of any force majeure such as severe accident, serious disease, imprisonment, acts of God or other events that occur outside of the taxpayers' will and restrain to fulfil any of tax duties, the period of payment shall be suspended until the force majeure event ends and the period of limitation shall be extended by the non-operational periods.

Accordingly, by accepting the existence of force majeure; the periods regarding the Abridged Statements, Value-Added Tax Statements and Form Ba-Bs Notifications that should be given in the period of force majeure; and periods for the creation and signing of e-Ledgers that need to be signed, are extended until the end of the 26th day of the month following the end of force majeure. The payment periods of the taxes accrued based on these statements will be extended from the month following the month in which the declaration is to be submitted, starting from the first period of which the declaration submission period is extended, until the end of the following month respectively for each period. In case there are less than 26 days to the last day of the statement/notification submission period as of the date when the force majeure situation ends, the last day of the statement/notification submission period will be taken into consideration as the last day on which Value Added Tax Statement will be submitted for the period in which the force majeure event ends.

Nihan Ünal