What is Distance Contracts?

Distance contracts are included in the Law on the Protection of the Consumer (In Turkish) and the Regulation on Distance Contracts and refer to contracts established by using remote communication tools between the parties until and including the moment the contract is established, within the framework of a system created for the remote marketing of goods or services, without the simultaneous physical presence of the seller or supplier and the consumer.

What are the Fundamental Changes Made in the Regulation on Distance Contract?

The Regulation on Amending the Regulation on Distance Contracts ("Regulation") (In Turkish) has been published in the Official Gazette dated August 23, 2022 and numbered 31932. The amendments made in the Regulation are as follows;

What is Liaison Office?

Liaison offices are named as places established by foreign country-based companies in the Turkish market, whose main field of activity is market research, communication, promotion, information and/or technical support. The most important difference of liaison offices from branches is that they are not allowed to engage in any commercial activity in Türkiye.

Liaison offices are regulated in the Foreign Direct Investment Law No. 4875 (In Turkish). According to the aforementioned Foreign Direct Investment Law, companies established in accordance with the laws of foreign countries may be allowed to establish a liaison office in Türkiye, provided that they cannot engage in commercial activities.The procedures and principles of the process of opening a liaison office are regulated in the Implementation Regulation of the Foreign Direct Investment Law (In Turkish), which is enacted based on the aforementioned Law.

With the Law No. 7417 (In Turkish) published in the Official Gazette dated 05.07.2022 and numbered 31887, a new asset repatriation regulation has been added to the Corporate Tax Law (In Turkish) with a temporary article 15, and the details on the regulation have been shared in our article dated 13.07.2022.

Regarding the new regulation, a GENERAL COMMUNIQUE (SERIAL NO: 1) published in the Official Gazette dated 09.08.2022 and numbered 31887. With this Communique, the procedures and explanations has been shared.

The explanations can be summarized as below:

With the Official Gazette dated 21.07.2022 and numbered 31899; a Presidential update has been published with regards to the employees working remotely under the scope of technology development and R&D regions.

With that decision; the income tax incentive time rate that is applied for the time performed outside of R&D and technology development regions, will be applied as 75% until 31.12.2023 for the R&D and technology development employees.

Based on that, the Presidential decision dated 16.01.2021 and numbered 4625 has been abolished.