Customers to be fined for failing to obtain receipts

Neşe Karanfil – ANKARA

Customers who fail to obtain an invoice or receipt would face a fine of 5,000 Turkish Liras, according to a draft law notice released by the country’s Revenue Administration and published in the Official Gazette.

This new regulation comes with two conditions: Customers will not face a fine if they notify the Revenue Administration within five working days of the receipt's supposed issuance date and before the authorities’ determination of the infraction of the rule.

After this five-day period, customers will no longer be able to avoid a fine, even if they later reach out to the tax office.

The draft also provides example scenarios to clarify the new regulation.

In one such instance, the draft explains that if a taxpayer buys a gift for their child and later finds they didn’t receive a receipt, they will be fined 5,000 liras, despite the gift not being related to their tax liabilities. The vendor will also face a separate fine for failing to provide a receipt.

In another instance, the draft describes a situation where an audit reveals that a customer did not receive a receipt for their purchases from a firm. In this situation, the customer would be fined 5,000 liras. However, if the audit also found that the firm had failed to issue receipts for the fourth time in a year, the firm would face a substantial fine of 40,000 liras.

This new regulation also implements a system where fines are doubled for individuals and businesses that fail to issue invoices and receipts.

According to this new law, the vendors will face a fine of 20,000 liras for the second detection of an irregularity on the matter, 30,000 liras for the third detection, 40,000 liras for the fourth detection, 50,000 liras for the fifth detection and 100,000 liras for the sixth detection.