• Income Tax Exempted Food Allowance

Meal allowance tax exemption amount that is applied as of 1st January 2016 was announced in 290 serial numbered Income Tax General Communique on 25.12.2015 with Official Gazette. According to this announcement, meal allowance, which is provided by the employer outside of the workplace and workplace outbuildings as defined in the Income Tax Law's 23rd Articles, exemption amount is defined as 13,70 TL for 2016.

The Minimum Subsistence Allowance (MSA) is a tax benefit for all employees. The amount of allowance varies on the employee's marital and family status, including dependent children. Employees can benefit from the MSA by filling out a declaration form and indicate information relating to their marital status, spouse's employment status and dependent children, if any.

The employees are responsible for providing truthful information and must inform their employer of any changes in their family status within 1 month, at the latest. While the responsibility of providing up-to-date MSA information rests with the employee, employers are recommended to periodically remind their employees to update their MSA information on their file to avoid potential tax fines.

Many corporations prefer using cars of non-taxpayers or their personnel to process their trading operations due to financial advantages. Procedures and points that require close attention will be mentioned in this article.

Whether it is one-time trading operation or multiple, in order to avoid any possible vagueness and identify responsibilities of both parties, a contract must be agreed upon and signed. It is beneficial to include issues in the contract such as which party will make the payments of car insurance and vehicle maintenance. In this trading operation, two parties, car renter and car owner, will have different responsibilities. Therefore, firstly, we will examine the ‘car renter’.²