Law No. 5904 Amending Income Tax and Other Laws (published in the Official Gazette No. 27277 and dated 3 July 2009) provides two significant tax incentives for merging companies: (i) Exemption of merger revenues from corporate tax, and (ii) Discounted corporate tax rates for the post-merger period. The aforementioned incentives are applicable only in relation to mergers carried out by small- and medium-sized enterprises (employing a number of 10-250 staff/total net sales of TL25 million as of year-end 2008) until 31 December 2009. Hence, enterprises established after the effective date of Law No. 5904 cannot benefit from the incentives. Moreover, Law No. 5904 amends the Turkish Commercial Code, whereby the “two-year transfer prohibition” on the post-merger shares of a company is not applicable to spin-offs to be carried out within the framework of Article 19 of the Corporate Tax Law.
General Communiqué No.  4 Regarding Corporate Tax (published in the Official Gazette No.27318 and dated 13 August 2009) also gives details of the amendments introduced by Law No. 5904.