Turkey launches new tax units and KURGAN system to fight evasion

The Turkish Tax Inspection Board, under the Ministry of Treasury and Finance, has launched three new specialized units to combat organized tax evasion and oversee international taxation. Effective October 1, these units are located in Ankara and Istanbul. The new departments in Ankara and Istanbul will focus on organized tax evasion, investigating complex financial structures, shell companies, fake document networks, and the misuse of public subsidies. A separate unit in Istanbul will specifically target the international taxation and transfer pricing activities of multinational corporations.

In conjunction with these structural changes, the government has implemented the KURGAN risk analysis system as part of a new strategy to combat fake documentation. Unlike previous models that reviewed transactions years later, KURGAN identifies risky transactions at an early stage. This system allows taxpayers to review and correct their declarations before formal audits begin.

Early results from the KURGAN system show that taxpayers corrected 120.141 billion lira in tax bases without the need for formal inspections. The automation and risk analysis capabilities have allowed the Tax Inspection Board to reach approximately three times the number of taxpayers achievable through traditional inspection methods. Additionally, the use of report automation has significantly reduced the average time required to complete investigations into fake document issuance.