In today’s conditions, more and more commercial enterprises carry out their commercial activities in more than one country and in that case, there is a need for information sharing between these countries in order to protect the interests of these commercial enterprises and to prevent tax losses. Country-Based Reporting is a reporting process that requires sharing information between multinational enterprises and tax authorities. In the reporting process, income and expense report, loss and profit comparison, number of employees and tables showing the main activities and functions of subsdiaries of the multinational enterprise come to the fore . The main purpose of the reporting process is to ensure the transparency of the financial status of multinational enterprises and their domestic tax status on an international level. With the bilateral and multilateral agreements, countries are able to automatically provide the Country-Based Reporting system on a mutual basis. On behalf of Turkey, the “Multilateral Competent Authority Agreement on the Exchange of Country-Based Reports” was signed on 30 December 2019 and approved by Presidential Decree No. 3038 published in the Official Gazette dated 1 October 2020 and numbered 31261.
There are also countries that do not prefer to be a party to the Multilateral Competent Authority Agreement on the Exchange of Country-Based Reports and prefer to make a bilateral agreement with the countries of their choice in order to ensure the automatic exchange of related information. United States is one of those countries that do not prefer to be a party of multilateral agreements and prefers to make bilateral agreements with each country.
In this context, Turkey and United States of America have agreed to sign a separate contract and Turkey executed the “Competent Authority Agreement Between the Competent Authorities of The United States Of America And The Republic Of Turkey” (“Arrangement”)on 17 November 2021 in Ankara. The said agreement was approved by Turkey with the Presidential Decree No. 5191 on 13 February 2022 and published in the Official Gazette dated 14 February 2022 and numbered 31750.
It is stated in the Official Gazette dated September 14, 2022 numbered 31953, that with the Presidential Decree numbered 6033, the effective date of the Arrangement will be 24 November 2021 and will be applied to the accounting periods starting on or after 1 January 2019.
With the entry into force of the Arrangement between Turkey and the United States; companies whose ultimate parent or proxy business is located in the United States will no longer be required to submit Country Based Reports of their businesses they have in Turkey to the Turkish authorities. Likewise, an enterprise that has ultimate parent business in Turkey and has company in United States, also there will be no need to submit Country Based Reports to the authorities of United States.
Deniz Öner
