Turkey increases tax audits on large-scale taxpayers

The Turkish Tax Inspection Board (VDK) has significantly increased its focus on large-scale and high-income taxpayers. This year, 31.3% of large-scale taxpayers underwent tax inspections, a substantial rise from approximately 11% in previous years. In contrast, inspection rates for medium-scale and small-scale taxpayers remained much lower at 7.3% and 1.1%, respectively.

Through the 2nd High-Income Groups Supervision and Compliance Program, the tax base has increased by 48.7 billion lira. The program identified 16,307 taxpayers for supervision, categorized into two groups: those with stakes in Turkey’s 42,000 largest companies whose reported income did not match risk analysis, and individuals whose luxury lifestyles were inconsistent with their declared tax payments.

Notably, approximately 7,000 taxpayers who had never previously filed a declaration were brought into the system following these investigations. This resulted in a 6.7 billion lira increase in income tax declarations, a 4.2 billion lira increase in tax deduction bases for companies they partner with, and a 33.9 billion lira increase in corporate tax bases.