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As a continuation of the digital solutions introduced during the last decade, applications such as e-dispatch bill, e-producer's receipt, e-independent profession bill and e-ticket will be a part of our lives in the upcoming months. The use of such digital solutions in every area of our lives has shown us that many activities we perform in the workplace can be completed from home during the pandemic.
Throughout the process of transition to e-ledger, no transformation has been introduced regarding the accounting vouchers based on journal entries up to now. The manual published by the Revenue Administration allows for the electronic arrangement of accounting vouchers, resulting in the transfer of all e-ledger associated transactions to the electronic sphere.
The new regulation makes it possible to electronically keep accounting vouchers. Although the e-accounting voucher application is currently left to the discretion of e-ledger users, it is understood that this application will be made compulsory in the near future.
When the e-ledger application was introduced, most of the taxpayers gave up arranging accounting vouchers by thinking that it was no longer necessary to arrange accounting vouchers. However, the Tax Procedure Law provides that purchase, sale and all other transactions must be recorded in statutory books within ten days at the latest. If these transactions are recorded in statutory books through accounting vouchers, the records within these vouchers may be transferred to journals and general ledgers within forty five days.
However, this regulation brings forth some difficulties for taxpayers instead of convenience. For example, the obligation of entering a journal item number in each e-accounting voucher at the moment of creation can be given as an example for such difficulties. When an accounting voucher is issued through this application, a journal item will also be issued in a sense. This means an implicit abolition of the forty-five days period for transferring accounting vouchers as stipulated in the Tax Procedure Law. As known, taxpayers may create e-ledgers and upload the respective certificates to the system of the Revenue Administration by the end of the third month following the pertaining period and this three-month period grants a considerable period of time for creating journal items.
This facility is completely removed through the e-accounting voucher application. Moreover, now it will be necessary to arrange e-accounting vouchers for any corrections to be made regarding the accounting vouchers. It does not seem possible to delete or change the accounting vouchers through a computer program as before.
It is understood that this regulation aims to transfer all correction and deletion records to statutory books via e-accounting vouchers without any change as in some ERP programs irrespective of the accounting programs used by taxpayers
On the other hand, I think that the said application will make accounting processes more complex and place an unnecessary workload on the accounting employees. For this reason, I believe that the minimum requirements for e-accounting vouchers must be revisited.