Repetition of Seizure Implementation

Do Repeated Attachments to Prevent the Statute of Limitations on Public Receivables Interrupt the Statute of Limitations?

In tax law, statute of limitations means that the tax receivable disappears with the passage of time. In tax law, there are two different types of statute of limitations: assessment statute of limitations and collection statute of limitations. While the assessment statute of limitations is regulated in the Tax Procedure Law No. 213, the collection statute of limitations is regulated in the Law No. 6183 on the Procedure of Collection of Public Receivables.

Article 102 of the Law on the Procedure for Collection of Public Receivables states that "If a public receivable is not collected within 5 years from the beginning of the calendar year following the calendar year in which the due date falls, it becomes statute of limitations. The statute of limitations provisions in the special laws regarding fines are reserved."

According to this provision, if 5 years have elapsed from the beginning of the year following the due date of the tax debt, the tax receivable will be time-barred, i.e. it will become unclaimable by the creditor administration, unless one of the circumstances that interrupt or suspend the statute of limitations has occurred.

The situations that interrupt the statute of limitations are regulated in Article 103 of the Law. The second of these is "imposition of attachment". Accordingly, if a levy is imposed within the 5-year statute of limitations, the statute of limitations will be interrupted and restarted. If only a part of the debt is collected with this attachment, the statute of limitations will start over for the remaining amount of debt and will continue to run for the period specified in the law. Repeated seizure of the same assets seized during this period is not a factor that interrupts the statute of limitations.

The imposition of attachment will interrupt the statute of limitations from the date the attachment warrants are issued and the attachment is applied, that is, public receivables will become statute of limitations for collection when 5 years have passed starting from the beginning of the year after the attachment, and the repeated attachments applied in the following years will not have any effect on the statute of limitations for collection. In this way, transactions for the imposition of attachment for the sole purpose of preventing the debt from statute of limitations, for example, repeated attachments to bank accounts on different dates (unless an asset is attached) will not interrupt the statute of limitations.