Regulation on Minimum Wage Support for 2025

With the Official Gazette dated January 31, 2025 and numbered 7539, a regulation was made on the minimum wage support to be provided to employers in 2025 by adding a temporary article 109 to the Social Insurance and General Health Insurance Law No. 5510.

With the regulation, the minimum wage support for the period January 1, 2025 - December 31, 2025 was determined as 1,000 TRY.

General information regarding the procedures and principles of the regulation is listed below:

1. Within the scope of subparagraph (a) of the first paragraph of Article 4 of Law No. 5510, private sector employers employing insured employees to whom the provisions of long-term insurance branches are applied are within the scope of the support.

Employers who hire employees covered under the long-term insurance provisions of the law must:

1. For the companies registered before 2025, the total number of days paid for insurance premiums reported in the monthly premium and service declarations, or in the withholding and premium service declarations for the same month of 2024, should not exceed for:
• Employees earning a daily wage up to 1,000 Turkish Lira,
• 2,000 Turkish Lira for employees at private sector employers with collective agreements,
• 2,667 Turkish Lira for employees at workplaces mining lignite and hard coal.
2. For the companies newly included under this law in 2025, the total amount calculated by multiplying the total number of days paid for insurance premiums reported for employees by 33.33 Turkish Lira per day, from January to December 2025, will be deducted from the insurance premiums owed by employers to the Institution and will be covered by the Unemployment Insurance Fund.
2. Employers will benefit from the minimum wage support without the need for an application.
3. To be eligible for minimum wage support, the monthly premium and service documents or withholding and premium service statements for the period of January to December 2025 must be submitted to the Institution within the legal deadline.

In addition, to benefit from this support during January to December 2025, employers must not only submit monthly premium and service documents or withholding and premium service statements within the legal deadline, but they must also pay the accrued insurance premiums within the legal timeframe.

4. If investigations and inspections by designated officers, court decisions, or communications from public institutions reveal that the earnings reported for insurance purposes were underreported or not reported at all for any month during January to December 2025, the Institution will issue a noticement to the employer. If the employer corrects this underreporting within fifteen days of receiving the warning, the establishments can still benefit from the minimum wage support for January to December 2024, provided the underreporting does not exceed one-tenth of the total monthly gross minimum wage for 2025 (2,600.55 TRY).
5. The workplace must not have any overdue debts for insurance premiums, unemployment insurance premiums, administrative fines, late fees, or penalty charges, or such debts must be restructured under various laws and installment plans as per Article 48 of the Law on the Procedure for Collection of Public Receivables No. 6183.
6. There should be no findings that the employer did not report the employees they employed during January to December 2025 as insured or that they did not actually employ the reported insured employees.
7. The number of insured employees reported from January to December 2025 should not be less than the number reported in the least reported month of January to December 2024.
8. If the employer is employing insured employees under incentives where the entire insurance premiums are covered by the state, they can only benefit from the minimum wage support up to the amount they would have paid, if the amount paid by the Unemployment Insurance Fund is less.

The minimum wage support is a mechanism designed to lighten the financial burden on employers, encourage registered employment, and particularly reduce labor costs for small and medium-sized enterprises to sustain employment. This support is provided to employers who meet the specified conditions.

For employers to benefit from this support, it is crucial that they comply with the set conditions and complete their Social Security declarations on time and accurately. Failure to do so, even if discovered after 2025, could result in the recovery of the support received, along with penalties and interest. Employers should also consider these regulations when setting future employment policies, as adhering to them will not only help achieve the objectives of the support but also provide them with benefits.

The procedures related to the minimum wage support by the Social Security Institution will be regulated annually by a circular after the publication of the Law, with detailed information provided upon the implementation of the relevant circular for 2025.

You can reach the relevant Official Gazette via that link (In Turkish).

Should you have any queries or need further details, please contact your customer representative.