Taxpayers to be offered digital convenience

ANKARA

The government will soon introduce practices to streamline bureaucratic processes for taxpayers, Treasury and Finance Minister Mehmet Şimşek has announced.

Şimşek said the Revenue Administration is working on a series of draft communiqués that will provide convenience to taxpayers, and the drafts will soon be made public for input and opinions.

"We are implementing a series of practices to reduce reporting obligations, increase voluntary tax compliance, fight the informal economy and reduce bureaucratic procedures," Şimşek said, adding that the state is always on the side of compliant taxpayers and will take all possible steps to reduce their obligations and costs.

"In this context, we are moving the expense voucher to the electronic environment, expanding the e-Ledger application and expanding the scope of electronic reporting," the minister said.

Explaining the details of the new procedures, Şimşek said they will abolish the Ba-Bs notifications, which have been required monthly since 2008 to report the purchases and sales of taxpayers who keep books on balance sheets. He noted that the need for these forms, affecting approximately 1.6 million taxpayers, has decreased due to the rise in electronic document applications and the implementation of data sharing between institutions.

Emphasizing that they will expand the scope of the e-Ledger application, which is currently used by approximately 720,000 taxpayers who maintain balance sheet-based records, Şimşek said that with the draft they have prepared, it is envisaged that all taxpayers who keep books on a balance sheet basis will be included in the e-Ledger application with an addition of approximately 1 million taxpayers in the system.

He stated that nine documents such as invoices, delivery notes and self-employment receipts that taxpayers are required to issue can be issued electronically.

"Because these electronic documents are delivered to the recipient electronically, there are significant savings in time and costs such as paper, toner and postage,” Şimşek said.

“We are working on adding the expense receipt to these documents. We are working to ensure that this document, which must be signed by both the buyer and the seller, can be approved electronically or using communication tools. In addition, we aim to enable accounting and declaration processes by ensuring that invoices issued by taxpayers below the 6,900 lira invoicing limit for this year are issued electronically," the minister added.

Şimşek pointed out that a significant part of the obligations of taxpayers, especially the filing of tax returns and notifications, are fulfilled by certified public accountants.

"With the planned amendment, taxpayers will be able to authorize professionals with whom they have an intermediation and liability agreement to carry out transactions for the services in the Digital Tax Office,” he said.

“Thus, accountants will be able to log in to the Digital Tax Office with their own data and perform the transactions for which they are authorized on behalf of their clients."