Judicial Development of Accounting in Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus

Year 2014, Issue: 6 - Issue: 6, 196 - 226, 01.01.2014

Emel Çapkıner Tosun Ayhan Tecel Güzide Atai

Abstract

In Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus legal development of accounting
shows parallelism with history of Cyprus. Legal arrangements go back to British
period. The accounting system in Cyprus is British accounting system. This accounting
system is practiced by merchants as in government offices. After all it is possible to
study the details of accounting as Republic of Cyprus and today in 3 different periods.
In this study there is detailed information about how the regulations and legislation
on accounting which was being practiced mostly between 1983 and 2012 has
developed. For this purpose required literature searched and study turn into much
more comprehensive literature research with comments and suggestions of analysts.
While in many countries accounting and auditing was legalized since 18th
century, in Cyprus it entered into company law in British Period in Cyprus in 1949.
Parallel with this, the rules of arrangement and approval of the accounts by
accounters authorized by ministry of finance which firstly rendered to tax Office,
transmitted from British Period to Turkish Republic Period and stated in Article 49 of
personal income tax act 13/1976 which was legalized by publishing it in 28/12/1961
dated newspaper. Such rules stated in article 29 of corporate income tax, Act 41/1976)
and stated in Article 60 of income tax law, Act 24/1982. In addition to this, although the
rule making power was given to Minister of Finance to arrange the basis and procedures
of certification of “Free Accountant and Auditors” in Article 62(2) of the act mentioned
before, any arrangements hasn’t been made until today. So basis and procedures
of this authority is up to choice. Namely, it is left to populism and politics to decide.
Legislations which will be practiced as a result of legal arrangements which
was done in time is being tried to finalize and they focused on much more tight control
in every act. As a result of increase in auditing quality of legislation some regulations
could have been made and creation of new business opportunities due to the increase
of demand to this profession may be effective to minimize the unemployment in a good
way.

Keywords

Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, Accounting, Legislation, Auditor.