Banks top corporate tax champions list of Turkey

ANKARA

Garanti Bank, headed by Ergun Özen, appears to have been Turkey's top corporate tax payer in 2012.

Turkish banks topped the corporate tax champion list in 2012. There are seven banks, plus the Central Bank, in the list, which was declared by Turkey’s Revenue Administration yesterday. Eleven banks are in the top 20 of the 2012 list while 23 banks in the first 100.

Garanti Bank, which is owned by the Turkish conglomerate Doğuş Group, appeared to be the top corporate tax payer of Turkey in 2012, paying 1.18 billion Turkish Liras in taxes. It was followed by the Turkish İşbank and Akbank with 1.15 billion and 1.11 billion liras, respectively, in taxes.

The state-run Ziraat Bank ranked fourth in the list, paying 1.1 billion. It was followed by Halk Bank, another state-run bank, at just over 1 billion liras. Yapı Kredi Bank, a joint venture between Turkish Koç holding and Italy-based Unicredit, ranked sixth in the 2012 list, paying 750 million liras of taxes.

Turkish Central Bank ranks seventh

The Turkish Central Bank, the champion of the year 2011, ranked seventh in the 2012 list with 743 million. The last of the banks in the top 10 list for 2012 was Vakıflar Bankası, another national bank. It ranked ninth, paying 509 million liras in tax.

Around 623,122 taxpayers had submitted their yearly tax returns by the end of April 2013, according to the press statement of Turkey’s Revenue Administration. A total of 31.9 billion liras of corporate tax was accrued by the authority, out of the declared 161.525 billion liras of taxable incomes.

Turkey’s biggest telecommunication company, Türk Telekom, ranked eighth in the list with 660 million liras in taxes while Turkey’s biggest mobile operator, Turkcell, was tenth with 506 million liras.

While Turkey’s central bank topped the 2011 list, it was followed by Türk Telekom, Turkcell, Garanti Bank, Yapı Kredi Bank, Halkbank, Vakıfbank, Ziraat Bank, İşbank and Tüpraş, which is Turkey’s biggest refinery, owned by Koç Holding respectively.

The Turkish banking sector’s net profit jumped 16.3 percent year-on-year to 6.95 billion liras (around $3.9 billion) in the first quarter of 2013, Turkish banking regulator BDDK announced in May. The sector’s loans rose 4.9 percent to 833.5 billion liras during the same period, as Reuters reported.