Every company registered in Turkey needs an accountant. That is not a figure of speech or a recommendation — a Turkish company's books have to be kept in a prescribed form, in Turkish, in Turkish lira, and its returns have to be filed on a calendar that does not pause while you look for someone. Foreign-owned companies usually appoint one in the first weeks after incorporation, often on a single recommendation, and then live with the consequences for years.
This page is what we would want to know if we were on the other side of that decision.
Who is allowed to be your accountant
The profession is regulated by Law No. 3568. There are two licences, and the difference between them matters.
| SMMM | YMM | |
|---|---|---|
| Full title | Serbest Muhasebeci Mali Müşavir | Yeminli Mali Müşavir |
| Rough English | Certified public accountant | Sworn-in CPA |
| Keeps your books | Yes | No |
| Prepares and signs your tax returns | Yes | No |
| Issues statutory certification (tasdik) reports | No | Yes |
| Typical role for a foreign-owned company | Your accountant | A second, separate appointment when certification is required |
An SMMM keeps the books, prepares the financial statements and signs the tax returns. A YMM does not keep books at all; a YMM certifies — and is specifically barred from certifying the accounts of a company whose books they keep, which is the point of the separation. If someone offers to do both, something is wrong.
Both licences require a university degree, a multi-year traineeship, a professional examination and registration with a local chamber — Ankara SMMM Odası, İstanbul SMMMO and so on — which are in turn federated under TÜRMOB.
Below the licensed professions there is a large informal layer: bookkeeping clerks, payroll staff and small offices working under somebody else's licence. There is nothing improper about employing them — most firms do, including ours — but the signature, the responsibility and the professional indemnity sit with the licensed person. You should know who that is by name.
What the law requires of your books
Independently of who you hire, a Turkish company carries a fixed set of obligations. These are the ones foreign owners most often discover late.
Language and currency. Statutory books are kept in Turkish and in Turkish lira. Your group's reporting currency makes no difference to this. A parallel set of records in your own currency is normal and useful; it does not replace the statutory set.
Two overlapping bodies of law. The Tax Procedure Law and the Turkish Commercial Code both impose book-keeping duties, and they do not agree with each other. The clearest example is retention: tax law requires records to be kept for five years, commercial law for ten. Ten is the number to work to.
Certification of the books. Statutory books must be certified before use, and some must be certified again after the year closes. Companies keeping electronic ledgers are exempt from notary certification of the journal and the board resolution book — but not of the share register or the general assembly minute book, which remain paper. Our bookkeeping page sets out which book is which and the exact deadlines.
Electronic invoicing and electronic ledgers. Turkey's e-invoice, e-archive and e-ledger regimes are mandatory above thresholds that have been lowered repeatedly. The practical risk is not the ledger — it is the invoice. A Turkish customer can and will refuse a paper invoice from a company that should have been issuing electronic ones, and that conversation usually happens before anyone has told you the threshold moved.
Signature on returns. Above modest turnover and asset thresholds, corporate tax returns must be signed by a licensed SMMM. The thresholds are revalued annually; in practice almost every foreign-owned company is over them.
What the appointment actually buys you each month
A reasonable scope for a foreign-owned Turkish company is more than "filing". It is:
- posting and reconciliation of bank, cash, purchases, sales, imports and payroll;
- fixed asset registers and depreciation on Turkish rules, which are not your group's rules;
- the periodic accruals and foreign-exchange valuations Turkish tax law requires;
- monthly VAT and withholding returns, the quarterly provisional corporate tax return, the annual corporate tax return;
- SGK declarations and the payroll that feeds them;
- creation and berat certification of the electronic ledgers;
- the annual statutory financial statements;
- and the conversion of all of the above into whatever your group consolidates under.
The last line is the one that gets left out of cheap quotes, and it is the one that costs the most to retrofit.
How to check that someone is licensed
TÜRMOB maintains a public member register, and the local chambers publish their own member lists. A licensed SMMM will give you a registration number without hesitation and will not mind you checking it. Ask also which chamber — a licence is held through a specific chamber, and the firm's address should match.
Two further checks worth five minutes:
- Who signs. The licence can belong to a person who has never seen your file. Ask who will actually sign your corporate tax return, and whether you will meet them.
- Professional indemnity. Ask whether the firm carries it and for how much. The answer tells you how seriously the firm takes its own exposure.
Six questions worth asking before you sign
- Who is the licensed SMMM on my file, and what is their registration number?
- Is the fee fixed, and what is outside it? Statutory audit, certification reports, transfer pricing documentation, inspection defence and one-off restructuring work are usually outside. That is reasonable — but it should be written down before, not invoiced after.
- In what language will I get my financial statements, and on what date each month? "English on request" is not an answer. A monthly close date is.
- How will my Turkish accounts be mapped to my group's chart of accounts? If the answer is a spreadsheet maintained by one person, you have found the single largest source of error in foreign-owned Turkish subsidiaries.
- What happens if the company is selected for a tax inspection? Ask whether defence is included, charged separately, or outside the firm's capability altogether.
- Who else do you act for that looks like me? Not names — sectors, sizes, parent jurisdictions. A firm whose clients are all domestic retailers will be learning on your file.
What changes when the owner is abroad
A domestically-owned Turkish company and a foreign-owned one have the same statutory obligations and almost nothing else in common.
The foreign-owned entity has a parent that consolidates on a different standard and a different calendar; it has intercompany transactions that bring transfer pricing documentation into scope; it has, often, a foreign director who needs a work permit and a payroll that has to accommodate expatriate terms; it is more likely to be in a dispute about VAT refunds or exemption claims; and it has a group auditor who will ask the Turkish component for a list of things in English, by a date set in another country.
None of that is exotic, but it is a different job from keeping the books of a company in Kayseri with one shareholder and no foreign currency. Most of the cost of a bad appointment is not the fee — it is the year spent discovering that the firm you hired does the other job.
Who you would be working with here
We are a licensed Turkish CPA practice working almost entirely with foreign-capital companies — roughly nine clients in ten. The practice was founded by Baran Özongan, SMMM — licence no. 06242653, issued under Law No. 3568 on 18 June 2007, registered with the Ankara Chamber of Certified Public Accountants under member no. 10523. The licence is verifiable in TÜRMOB's public member register. He set up and ran PwC's accounting services department in Ankara for five years, after more than five years at Mazars.
Work is done in-house by a named CPA who knows your entity, to a fixed fee rather than hourly billing. Where a matter needs a lawyer, we say so and work alongside yours. Our offices are in Ankara and Istanbul, with a UK company serving clients from London.
If you want the detail by service, the services index lists all sixteen, grouped by whether you are arriving, running, changing or under scrutiny. The ones most companies start with are company formation, bookkeeping, payroll, tax return filing and IFRS / US-GAAP reporting.
Frequently asked questions
Do I legally need a Turkish accountant, or can my group's accountants do it?
You need books kept in Turkey, in Turkish, under Turkish rules, and above modest thresholds you need a licensed Turkish SMMM to sign the corporate tax return. Your group's accountants can do everything else; they cannot do that.
Can I appoint an accountant before the company exists?
Yes, and you generally should. The decisions taken at formation — company type, capital, registered address, the fiscal year, which electronic regimes you fall into — are accounting decisions with long tails. We handle formation and the registrations that follow as one piece of work.
Do I have to be in Turkey?
No. Formation, the registrations, the appointment and the monthly cycle can all be done without you entering the country. A power of attorney is required.
How much does an accountant in Turkey cost?
It depends on transaction volume, payroll headcount, whether group reporting is in scope and whether the entity is in a dispute. Be suspicious of a quote given before anyone has asked those questions, and read what is excluded. We quote fixed monthly fees against a written scope.
What is the difference between an accountant and an auditor here?
Your accountant keeps the books and files the returns. A statutory independent audit, where the company meets the thresholds requiring one, is performed by a separate audit firm which cannot be the same firm. A YMM certification report is a third, different thing again.
My accountant files everything on time but I cannot read anything they send me. Is that normal?
It is common and it is not acceptable. Statutory output is in Turkish because the law requires it; your management information does not have to be. If you cannot read your own numbers, you are not being served — you are being filed for.
Can I change accountants mid-year?
Yes. The handover is a defined process — the ledgers, the electronic ledger archives, the certification history and the open balances transfer, and the outgoing firm is obliged to hand over your records. Changing in the first months of a fiscal year is tidier than changing in month eleven, but either is possible.
What should I do first?
Establish who the licensed SMMM is, get the scope and the fee in writing, and agree the monthly close date and the reporting language before anything else. Everything expensive that goes wrong later is traceable to one of those three.