Government support for entrepreneurs: 657 billion Turkish lira removed from corporate tax

The government, by increasing the direct and indirect tax burden on employees, continues to reduce the burden on employers.

In the central government’s 2024 budget bill, which will be debated tomorrow in the Grand National Assembly of Turkey, the amount of tax exempted for reasons such as discounts, exemptions and exceptions is expected to increase to 2 trillion 210 billion TL next year. This figure amounted to 994 billion Turkish liras in the 2022 budget proposal.

This figure appears as a “tax expenditure” item in the budget. The concept of tax expenditure; It is defined in the broadest sense as “privileges or exceptions and exemptions that reduce the total revenue of the states and deviate from the standard tax system.”

The amount of “fiscal spending” was predicted at 2 trillion 778 billion TL for 2025 and 3 trillion 223 billion TL for 2026.

The amount of the 2.2 trillion TL tax that will be eliminated in 2024 corresponds to 26.5 percent of the 8.3 trillion TL tax that will be collected. In 2007, this rate was 9.2 percent.

EXCEPTION AND EXEMPTION AS HALF OF THE OBJECTIVE

In the budget bill signed by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, of the 2.2 trillion tax expenditures planned for 2024, 1 trillion 6 billion TL will go to the income tax law, 657 billion TL will be to the corporate tax law, 342 billion TL will be For the value added law, it was stated that 62 billion TL will be covered by the special consumption tax law and 143 billion TL will be covered by other laws.

657 billion lire of the total corresponds to the amount that the State will forgive of the corporate tax that companies must pay directly. This amount corresponds to 7.9 percent of the tax revenue expected to be collected in 2024. This rate was only 2.4 percent in 2007.

The amount exempt from corporate tax in 2024 corresponds exactly to half of the 315 billion Turkish lira that is expected to be collected. In the proposed 2023 budget law, it was anticipated that the amount to be exempted from corporate tax would be 281 billion Turkish liras.

SUPPORT FOR THE RICH IN INCOME TAX, SCT AND VAT

It was announced that 90.6 billion TL will be exempt from taxes in 2022 due to the elimination of income tax and stamp duty for all employees up to the minimum wage. No figure has been announced for 2023, but even if this rate quadruples in 2024, it will correspond to approximately 360 billion Turkish lira and will constitute less than half of the trillion lira that must be waived in income tax .

In addition to corporate taxes, tax exemptions, exemptions and discounts are also given to the rich and companies within the scope of VAT, SCT and other tax laws.

For example, among them are “taxes on income obtained during the disposal and holding of securities and other capital market instruments, as well as on interest on deposits, income from repo transactions and income obtained from special financial institutions” .