WEEKLY INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND ECONOMY NEWSPAPER
The incentive system in Turkey is undergoing changes over the years depending on the requirements of the time we live in and application disadvantages. Deloitte Turkey Tax Services Leader Ahmet Cangöz reminded that they haven’t mastered the details of the new stimulus package, announced on June 13 for the moment as the Parliament has not yet started working on the commission. He stated that; “However, we can have an idea about the new package when we evaluate the statements made by the Minister and the 65th Government Program.” The new package is expected to offer the best stamp tax and fee expenses along with many other advantages. Another distinctive feature is expected to be the incentives upon granting residential permits and citizenships to the foreigners buying houses from a certain value in order to become a regional management center. In this context, especially stamp tax changes draw attention of the IT world such as the stamp tax to be issued on only a single copy of a contract, no stamp tax for high and mediumhigh technology products production, no stamp tax or fees for the investment papers regarding technologically advanced company buying which allows technology transfer from overseas companies, no stamp tax in the capital goods purchases, the purchase of machinery, the construction of a factory, the leasing or purchasing regarding the intangible rights of investment periods, consulting and technical consultancy. Opportunity of becoming a regional management center and a regional hub According to KPMG Turkey Tax Partner Emrah Akın, the new stimulus package announced on June 13 primarily concerns with the revolutionary steps regarding Turkey’s position as a “regional management center and regional service center”. The first step is to become a Regional Management Center. In order to attract investment and to increase foreign income, becoming a regional
Everything is for innovation, regional center status and foreign investors... The new stimulus package announced in June 13 contains many advantages such as the promotion of foreign investment and innovation, a significant reduction in stamp tax and many others. The package offers the opportunity for Turkey to become a regional center; it should be supported by some plug-ins. But even the realization of its current version will bring important opportunities.
hub has a key importance. Turkey is located within a fourhour flight for approximately 60 countries and 2 billion people and this makes us a very important center of attraction for international investors. The biggest trump of Turkey on becoming a regional center is its geographical position; however as Emrah Akın noted, this is not enough by itself. The latest foreign direct investment inflows already prove the point. A prominent issue in the new stimulus package is the stamp tax revision that is a serious cost for the investors. According to Akın, the steps
to be taken are very precious. However, the “stamp tax levied on contracts” rate (9.48 per thousand) being reduced by time and the maximum stamp tax over a paper (approximately 1.8 million TL) reduction would be very helpful, as well. Turkey can be the service center When international companies open a “regional headquarters” in Turkey and want to manage units in various parts of the world from Turkey, they face some gray areas of tax. Emrah Akın detailed this phrase as the following:
“As the practices and opinions of Revenue Administration (GİB) on the regional administration centers forming a “business center” and are subject to taxes were not clear enough to attract enough investors for regional headquarters area. According to the package, a corporate income tax exemption is on the road for the regional management centers. Currently, the regional management centers can benefit from the exemption from tax on all wages paid. After the corporate income tax exemption, the regional headquarters will be more
appealing in the future. This step can provide gains in production and exports on the medium and long terms.” According to Akın, the second revolutionary step is becoming a Regional Service Center. These centers can be described as being under a global organization or company with international capital and has businesses operating in several countries and providing services of architecture, engineering, call center, accountancy record keeping and many others. In this regard, some legal steps are taken as Emrah Akın remarked: “Turkey already took one of the most important steps in June 2012 in the Corporate Tax Law with an addition to Article 10 on the road to becoming a service center. Accordingly, the 50% of the cost of some exclusive services given to non-residents in Turkey and citizens who have business or and business centers abroad can be deducted from the income statement of the institution. These services, except for some controversial points, are not subject to VAT, an important step was taken in terms of becoming a service export center. The services which could benefit from the tax support are architecture, engineering, design, software, medical reporting, accountancy record keeping, call center, data storage, and education and health services. The fruits of the steps taken in this regard in 2012 could not be collected due to the absence of incentives for the reduction of operational costs such as service centers fee and social security contributions. But the new package is understood to be taken important steps in the reduction of costs related to the personnel employed. Accordingly, there will be no withholding income tax on the wages of employees of companies which provide at least 80% of their income abroad. Either the income tax exemption will be 100% or applied at a certain percentage, it is not yet clear. However, we can say that this step in the context of Turkey’s service export is revolutionary.”
We are working on really ‘smart hospitals’ in Turkey
Sürat Education Tools reached stability with ASUS VivoMini Sürat Education Tools aims at providing corporate services of international standard with its exceeding 5 thousand types of products, experienced staff in the field and after-sales services. Working in classroom furniture, whiteboards, laboratory systems, education technologies and preschool; Sürat Education Tools continues its marketing activities in about 120 countries abroad. Over the past 5 years, the company has a very productive partnership with ASUS, especially with the recent VivoMini compact PCs; it grabbed the chance to reach the highest level of customer satisfaction. With increasing technological influence in the field of education, Sürat Education Tools desired to add value to the quality service it offers to students and needed a computing solution that will facilitate both students’ and
educators’ lives. In the trilogy of smart boards, projectors and computers, they decided to benefit from VivoMini compact PCs offered by ASUS for the most important piece, computers’ quality and efficiency. In the period before ASUS, Sürat could not receive enough before and after sales support and ASUS’s experienced staff and presales and after sales support quality played a vital role in the decision making process. Established with the objective of eliminating errors in the 40 minutes long classes; Sürat Education Tools benefited from ASUS customer-oriented business model.
Hospital processes today, despite being much more successful when compared to the last 10 years, still means long queues for patients who does not where to go, walking around constantly, keep being recorded, checking if the results come out again and again and in this turmoil, questioning whether the diagnosis and the treatment is correct or not. The scenario for the health personnel contains working for long hours, preparation of the documents and then recording it into the system software, unsatisfied patients and the fear of making mistakes due to overwork. “The duty of IT companies in the new era is to digitalize the current environment for the satisfaction of patients and medical staff; to improve health care in terms of efficiency for hospitals and quality for the institutions.” According to Advantech iService Country Consultant Mert Erinç, in order to do that, we should build paperfree ‘smart hospitals’ and manage those from a single system center. IT companies need to do this. Mert Erinç answered our questions about Turkey’s global market position between private and public sector: n How the government regulatory agencies control these issues and what are the priorities? As far as it can be seen, public hospitals are moving towards digitization in an incredibly fast pace. By this, I
Offering the right services and products is the first step towards setting up a real ‘smart hospital’.
mean the digitalization which provides all the work done immediately saved to the system and instantly acquired by the entire medical staff. Public hospitals are in the right track with software and hardware and are supported by the government. The most basic step of a hospital to be smart is being able to achieve data anywhere in the hospital, so wired and wireless, communication being implemented successfully all over the
2015 report cards of IT companies The countdown continues for ‘ICT 500’ research including a very comprehensive data in the ICT sector development in Turkey and enabling companies to have the opportunity to see their competitive position in the market while evaluating their own performance. Prepared by BThaber in cooperation with M2S, the results of the 17th research will be announced with a ceremony
to be held on July 28 in CVK Park Bosphorus Hotel, Istanbul. The rankings revealed by the ‘Top 500 ICT Companies of Turkey 2015 - Development, Trends and Prospects of the ICT market’ is considered the most important data source in the sector, especially playing a decisive role in purchasing decisions of corporate customers. This year’s motto is ‘the gears of
the time are turning for the IT sector’ and the research is prepared with the shared data of over a thousand companies in the sector. Looking at the sectoral details revealed by the research; despite the depreciation of TL; 65% of the companies increased income in 2015, only 18% seems to have a decreased income. In 2015, 79 companies were listed,
while the increasing income companies’ average growth rate in TL is 48%. 26 companies have achieved success by showing a growth of over 100%. The first 500 companies in the 2015 ranking have an increase in their income by 4% compared to the previous year.
hospital. The second step is to integrate the ERP software interface used in the hospital to enable the medical staff communicate with each other to the hospital environment. The third step is to make appropriate changes to the software to ensure this interface is in operation and to train medical personnel in this regard. The final stage is the use of a database and server infrastructure to save it in a healthy way. These are done by the ‘smart hospitals’.