Turkish Labor Law
During the pandemic, quite a few provisional legislations related to business life came into effect. While some were implemented before such as short-time work allowance, others such as cash wage support were implemented first time during the Covid period. The most recent and most comprehensive legislation is the omnibus law, which was published in the Official Gazette on November 19th.
What’s in the Omnibus Law?
The 298-page omnibus law covers a wide range of areas including corporate receivables arising from KYK, VAT, MTV, SCT, traffic fines, tax debt, real estate tax, environmental cleaning tax, advertisement and advertisement tax, water and waste water tax, solid waste fees, road participation shares, administrative fines, debts including treasury receivables. Debts and penalties can be structured if applied until the end of the year.
Additional Articles to Unemployment Insurance Law and Unregistered Employment Pardon
Temporary articles are added to the Unemployment Insurance Law No. 4447. According to these temporary articles, in order for the unemployed to be re-employed and the unregistered to be legally employed, for the employment or service contract that have expired between 1 January 2019 and 17 April 2020, the unregistered employees are given the opportunity to apply to their last workplace, and if they are actually employed by the employers, the employers will receive a premium reduction of 44.15TL per day will apply.
Among the applicants, 39.24 TL per day will be provided for those who are hired by the employer and assigned to unpaid leave, and 34.34 TL per day per household will be provided for those who declare that their application is not accepted.
The employers will not be penalised because of employing employees without notifying SSI in the past. No refund of any previous social support or other rights that the employers benefitted will be requested from the employer.
According to another temporary article added to the Unemployment Insurance Law, if additional employment is provided during the period when the number of insured is the lowest, which is notified between January 2019 and April 2020, SSI premium support will be provided for each insured.
On the other hand, the President will be able to increase the aforementioned incentives at the rate of hike to the minimum wage at the beginning of the year.
VAT Exemption Introduced
The Value Added Tax (VAT) exemption was introduced as a temporary measure. The exemption period initially set to end by 2020 is extended till end of 2025.
Postponement of Public Rent (Isgaliye) to Touristic Facilities
Between April 1 and June 30, 2020, touristic facility enterprises on public lands affiliated to the Ministry of Culture and Tourism are obliged to pay lease, final permit, final allocation, easement right, usage permit, utilization, additional utilization fees and revenue shares. The payments are postponed for 6 months. The payments of enterprises with the same conditions to the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, covering the period from 1 July to 31 December 2020, have been postponed for 1 year.
On the other hand, Accommodation Tax, which was published in the Official Gazette last year and expected to come into effect for this year, has been postponed to 2022.
SSI Premium Debts of Self Employed
The SSI insurance of those who are self-employed and work in agriculture, who have premium debt as of 31 August 2020 will be ceased if they do not pay their premium debts for the period before this date, until the end of the second month following the effective date of this article. Suspended periods will not be covered under SSI insurance.
Support to the Public Companies
The corporate tax will be applied with a 2-point discount on the earnings of the first-time public offerings, to be traded on the Borsa Istanbul Equity Market by at least 20 percent, starting from the first fiscal period and following 5 accounting periods. However, the public offering institution should not be a bank, financial leasing company, factoring company, financing company, payment and electronic money institution, foreign exchange institution, asset management company, capital market institution, or insurance/reinsurance company.
