10 million citizens work without social security, causing tax losses

ANKARA - Anatolia News Agency

The waged or casual workers and the ones who conduct their own business create informal employment in Turkey. DAILY NEWS photo, Emrah GÜREL

Informal employment costs the state an annual 30 billion Turkish Liras in social security premiums and taxes, according to figures revealed by Turkey’s state-run statistical institute, TÜİK, yesterday.

TÜİK’s data for October 2012 shows that there are 10,123,000 unregistered workers and the undeclared employment rate is 39.7 percent.

People who conduct business on their own create a gap of 13.7 billion liras by avoiding registering for social security and paying taxes, while wage or casual workers create a 16.3 billion-lira deficit in income, for a total gap of around 30 billion liras.

The research indicates that 3,720,000 of 10,123,000 informal employees are waged or casual workers, 3,006,000 conduct their own business, 3,141,000 are unwaged domestic workers and 256,000 are employers.

The agricultural sector comprises nearly 5.5 million informal employees while non-agricultural work makes up around 4.5 million. 60 percent of workers in informal sectors are men, while the rest are women.

Turkey ranks 19 among 59 countries that suffer the most from informal economy blocking its development, according to the International Institute for Management Development’s Global Competitiveness Report 2012.