Ministry to text message tax debtors

ANTALYA - Anatolia News Agency

Turkish Finance Minister Mehmet Şimşek

The Finance Ministry is to notify taxpayers about their tax debts with SMS messages, Finance Minister Mehmet Şimşek has revealed.

Şimşek was attending a meeting organized by the Revenue Administration in Antalya on Jan. 19 in order to discuss the tax administration’s annual evaluation procedures.

He said the ministry had been implementing significant projects to support taxpayers and increase levels of tax collection at the same time. The sending of SMS messages to tax debtors is one of these projects.
“We’ve systematically and strongly founded the infrastructure of the system and are about to initiate it,” he said.

Şimşek also emphasized that these messages would not contain information about the amount of tax owed, as this is a fluid item and, more importantly, it is private information. Receivers of text messages can go to website of the ministry to learn the amount they owe, he said.

The application is set to be launched within one year.

Meanwhile, Şimşek also said the taxpayer had been strengthened against the administration through recent policies, particularly mentioning that the rights of taxpayers and the standards for tax auditing have been established for the first time with the “proclamation of taxpayers’ rights.”