Reporting duties for commercial activity in digital environments: the scope now reaches intermediaries and social networks

The Ministry of Treasury and Finance published Communiqué No. 595

Türkiye's Ministry of Treasury and Finance published the amendment widening reporting duties for commercial activity in digital environments in the Official Gazette dated 5 September 2026, issue 33361. The text is titled Communiqué Amending the Tax Procedure Law General Communiqué (Serial No: 538) and carries serial number 595. The original instrument it amends is General Communiqué No. 538, published in the Official Gazette dated 31 May 2022. Under its Article 4, the new communiqué entered into force on the date of publication, that is 5 September 2026, and its provisions are executed by the Minister of Treasury and Finance.

Anadolu Ajansı reported the change on 5 September 2026 in a story filed by Seda Tolmaç. The stated purpose of the communiqué is to secure tax collection in electronic commerce and in every kind of digital environment, the internet included. That purpose signals from the outset that the rule addresses not only the party making the sale, but also the parties that build and operate the environment where the sale takes place.

Who reports, which data, and for which period

The communiqué names the reporting parties one by one: real and legal persons carrying out commercial activity in electronic environments, electronic commerce service providers, intermediary service providers, access providers, content providers, hosting providers and social network providers. In other words, alongside the seller sit the parties that run the platform, host the content and provide the access. Communiqué No. 538 had already set up a reporting regime in this area back in 2022; Communiqué No. 595 widens the list of parties it applies to.

The data to be reported falls into three groups. First, the web address or addresses through which the service is provided. Second, the name and surname or trade name of the parties served, together with identity data used to establish taxpayer status such as national identity numbers, foreigner identity numbers and tax identification numbers. Third, listing data relating to sale or rental transactions covering movable and immovable property, goods and services. Reporting is based on transactions carried out within one-month periods of the calendar year, which turns the duty into a monthly rhythm rather than an annual file assembled once.

Record keeping moves out of the accounting afterthought

The weight of the change sits in three places. First, the set of addressees widens: reporting is no longer only the seller's job, but also the job of the parties that provide the infrastructure the sale runs on. Second, the requested data descends to the level of identity and listings; when a web address, taxpayer identity data and listing records are reported together, a transaction can be connected to its counterparty, its environment and its published listing. Third, the monthly period turns this from a one-off declaration into a continuous data flow.

Read together, the three points suggest that record keeping in digital sales stops being something reconstructed after the fact by accounting and becomes an obligation that has to live inside the sales system itself. That assessment is ours. The text describes neither an audit method nor a scale of penalties; it confines itself to setting out which party reports which data for which period. The breadth of the scope is in that definition alone.

For a business in Türkiye, the real task is a data inventory

Since the rule applies directly to taxpayers in Türkiye, the question is concrete: which data do you hold, in which system, and how consistently. For a business selling through its own site, most of the reportable information already sits inside order and membership records. The practical problem is rarely absence of data, it is scatter: trade name and tax number fields that do not line up with the order, listing and product pages whose earlier versions were never kept, multiple domains, subsites and marketplace accounts that were never gathered into a single list.

So the work for this week looks less like an infrastructure change and more like an inventory exercise: list every web address through which the service is offered, make the name or trade name plus identity and tax number fields complete and consistent in customer records, archive sale and rental listings with their dates, and make those three sets reportable in one-month periods. What keeps the monthly rhythm from becoming manual labour is enforcing those fields at the point of entry in the panel and being able to pull the report in one step. That reading is ours.

Sources

Official Gazette of Türkiye, Tax Procedure Law General Communiqué No. 595, 5 September 2026, issue 33361 · Official Gazette of Türkiye, table of contents for the 5 September 2026 issue · Anadolu Agency, Reporting obligations for commercial activity in digital environments amended · Alomaliye, Tax Procedure Law General Communiqué No. 595