Istanbul Chemicals: 5% Discount for Regular Taxpayers

Tax relief of 5 percent announced for taxpayers with regular payment records. In efforts to advance Turkey's chemical sector, the "Tax Relief for Regular Taxpayers" proposal put forward three years ago by Murat Akyüz, Chairman of İKMİB, was published in the Official Gazette and became law recently. As with all sectors, heavy tax burdens rank among the most significant challenges for the chemical sector. An important step has been taken in tax relief, which holds a prominent place on the agenda of İKMİB, which works to increase Turkey's chemical sector exports and develop solutions to the sector's problems. With the new law, income tax and corporate tax taxpayers making regular payments will receive a 5 percent reduction as of 2018. However, the law does not cover the finance, insurance and banking sectors. The taxpayer must have filed regular tax returns and paid taxes on time in the year the reduction is applied and in the two preceding years. According to the law, the reduction amount cannot exceed TRY 1,000,000 and may be offset against other taxes. Murat Akyüz, Chairman of the Board of Directors of İKMİB, made the following statement regarding the tax reduction: "Three years ago, in meetings we held with the Prime Minister, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Finance and other officials at the time to discuss the problems of our exporters, one of the proposals we raised was to implement a tax reduction of at least 5 percent in income or corporate tax for our firms that pay taxes regularly. Subsequently, we followed up on this proposal in various forums and held discussions on reducing the tax burden on taxpayers who pay their taxes on time and regularly. When various restructuring and amnesty programs were available for those unable to pay taxes, this situation caused some dissatisfaction among our firms that paid taxes on time. From this perspective, the 5 percent reduction was welcomed with satisfaction by our sector firms. This preferential treatment for those paying taxes on time will in the long run lead to a significant increase in the number of regular tax payers. We are very pleased that our tax reduction proposal has come to fruition, and we thank our government, particularly the Ministry of Finance, for this implementation that will provide relief to our exporters.