1 CENT PAYMENTS MADE BY THE MINISTRY OF FINANCE DO NOT INTERRUPT THE STATUTE OF LIMITATIONS
Article 103/1 of the Law No. 6183 states that payment shall interrupt the statute of limitations. However, what should be understood from this article is partial payment. Because, if the public debt is paid, there is no statute of limitations, but if it is partially paid, the statute of limitations will be valid for the remaining amount. Therefore, partial payment interrupts the statute of limitations. Therefore, the term ‘payment’ in Article 103/1 of the Law No. 6183 should be understood as partial payment.
If the public debt consists of different items, the partially paid amount is divided (proportionate division) in the public debt. And for the remaining amount, the 5-year period starts again from the beginning of the year following the year in which the payment was made.
In order to interrupt the statute of limitations for collection, payments made by officials in charge of tax procedures on behalf of the taxpayer without the taxpayer’s knowledge should not interrupt the statute of limitations. It is thought to be interrupted only by the administration and the officials making the payment. Payments made in this way are both contrary to the Tax Procedure Law No. 213 and the Public Financial Management and Control Law No. 5018 and constitute an offence.
In the decision of the 3rd Chamber of the Council of State dated 04.03.2019 and No: 2015/13617, Decision No: 2019/1485, it was stated that ‘from the documents submitted by the defendant administration, it is seen that there are also low-amount collections (1, 7 kurus…etc.) regarding the taxes and penalties in question, but it has been concluded that the collections in question are payments made by the defendant administration in order to interrupt the statute of limitations, and that the payments in question will not interrupt the collection period.’
In addition, in the decision, it is stated that these payments, which are very low amounts such as a few liras, which are not in accordance with the ordinary course of life, cannot be made by the public debtor and that it should be accepted that these payments are made by the public administration, since these payments are not a real payment made by the debtor, this apparent payment will not interrupt the statute of limitations for collection.
Similar decisions were made in the tax court decision approved by the decision of the 4th Chamber of the Council of State dated 26.01.2021 and numbered E. 2016/6778, K. 2021/522, and in the tax court decision approved by the decision of the 3rd Chamber of the Council of State dated 10.12.2018 and numbered E. 2015/1632, K. 2018/7526.
In the decision of the 3rd Chamber of the Council of State dated 29.11.2021 and numbered Esas No: 2018/560, Decision No: 2021/5684, the similar decision is that the payments in the amount of 0.1 TL cannot be considered as voluntary payments for the purpose of getting rid of the debt and will not interrupt the collection period.
As can be seen, partial payments made by the Public Administration in order to interrupt the statute of limitations for collection are not accepted by the Council of State. In this case, the debt is considered to be time-barred.
In this way, even if a payment order has been received for the debts that are understood to be time-barred, it can be taken to the judiciary within 15 days from the notification of the payment order (Article 58 of Law No. 6183).