What is an incentive, who benefits, and which condition is most often missed?

Sibel Hanım the florist's surprise

Two months ago Sibel Hanım took on the first employee at her flower shop: 24-year-old Deniz. Her friend in the shop next door said, "You've hired a young person, the state pays their premium." This month Sibel Hanım looked at the amount she would pay to SGK; there was no discount at all. She called her mali müşavir (accountant). The answer was two sentences: "Last month's return went two days late, so that month's discount was lost. And no incentive was selected for Deniz on the return either; let's look at the conditions."

Sibel Hanım's question is a fair one: incentives exist, but they do not come on their own.

An incentive is like a loyalty card at the supermarket

On the supermarket shelf it says "discount for cardholders". If you don't scan your card at the till, you don't pay the discounted price. If your card has expired, it won't go through even if you scan it. SGK incentives work the same way. The state says, "I will cover the premium of an employer who meets these conditions." But if that incentive is not selected on the return filed each month, the discount does not come. If one of the conditions has been broken, it does not come even if you select it.

What does incentive mean?

An incentive (teşvik) means the state covering part of the SGK premium the employer pays. Most incentives do not reach you as cash; they are deducted from the premium you will pay that month, or from the premium debt of the following months.

There are two kinds:

• Those tied to the workplace: They apply to all employees of every employer who meets the conditions. The Treasury discount (below) and the minimum wage support (next lesson) are like this.
• Those tied to the person: They open up according to the age, sex, certificate or İŞKUR registration of the person you hire. The youth and women employment incentive is like this (Youth and women employment incentive).

The conditions they all share

Each incentive has its own conditions, but almost all of them share these three gates.

1. Filing the return and paying the premium on time. The monthly return that reports how many days each employee worked and their gross earnings (official name muhtasar ve prim hizmet beyannamesi; accountants call it "MUHSGK"; in this lesson simply "the return") is filed by the 26th of the following month. The SGK premium is paid by the last day of the following month. If the return goes even one day late, or the premium is paid late, that month's discount can be lost.

2. Having no overdue debt. Where the debt is checked depends on the incentive. For the Treasury discount it is not only this workplace that is looked at: the overdue premium, administrative fine and late payment debts to SGK of all the same employer's workplaces in Türkiye are checked together. For the youth and women employment incentive, only the debt of the workplace receiving the incentive is looked at. Debt that has been restructured or put into instalments in line with the law, with the instalments not missed, does not count as an obstacle.

3. Not employing anyone off the record. If someone you employ without insurance, or someone you show as insured although they do not actually work, is detected, you cannot benefit from incentives for a period. Under Law No. 5510 additional art. 14, at the first detection this is one month starting from the beginning of the month following the detection; if it happens again within three years of the first detection, one year for each detection. The law gives workplaces with many employees a small margin; in a workplace with a few employees, even a single person is enough for the ban. With the minimum wage support the sanction is heavier: that year's support cannot be received at all, and what was received is reclaimed (next lesson). Situations that start with "they're coming for two days as a trial" or "my nephew is helping out" are also unregistered employment. So is employing a person without notification so that an incentive condition can arise (for example, while waiting for the candidate's İŞKUR registration): if you need to wait, postpone the start of work, not the notification. As a rule the employment start notification is filed at least one day before work starts. The registration rules are in the employment start notification lesson.

The most common one: the Treasury discount

Under Law No. 5510 art. 81/ı, the Treasury pays a few points of the SGK employer share of a private sector employer who meets these three conditions. For many years it was known as the "5-point discount"; in February–December 2025 it fell to 4 points outside manufacturing. For 2026 the situation is as follows (Law No. 7566, Official Gazette 19.12.2025; SGK Circular 2026/1):

The 5 points for manufacturing ends at the end of 2026; the President can extend it to the end of 2027. The system itself decides which rate applies by looking at the workplace's activity code (NACE) at SGK; a workplace whose code is in section "C – Manufacturing" counts as manufacturing. If the code is reported wrongly and too much discount is received, the difference is reclaimed with late payment penalty and surcharge.

Let's look at the amount. The 2026 minimum wage is 33,030 lira gross. In non-manufacturing work 2 points comes to 660.60 lira per employee per month; over a year it passes 7,900 lira. In manufacturing 5 points is 1,651.50 lira a month. You saw the total cost of a minimum wage employee in the lesson The real cost of an employee; the versions with and without the discount are side by side in the table in the article How much does an employee cost me? (in Turkish).

What happens if the discount was lost because of a debt? When you pay or restructure the debt, you benefit again from the first return whose deadline has not yet passed. The lost months do not come back. So leaving a small late payment surcharge with "I'll pay it later" can take away a large discount.

An incentive does not come on its own: the law number

On the return, which incentive applies to each employee is selected with a law number. For example "5510" for the Treasury discount and "6111" for the youth and women employment incentive (in the system a zero is put in front: 05510, 06111). If no selection is made, or the wrong number is selected, that month's incentive does not come.

There are two more points you need to know:

• Since May 2021, the incentive for a month in which it could have been used but was not cannot be claimed later; and a selected incentive cannot later be swapped for another incentive (Law No. 5510 additional art. 17, SGK Circular 2021/16). Apart from a few special exceptions such as investment incentives and R&D, a missed month stays missed.
• For the same employee, more than one person-related incentive generally does not stack; your mali müşavir chooses the most suitable one. Because the choice cannot be changed later, the first choice matters.

The division of work is as follows: before the employment starts, you find out the candidate's age, last place of work, İŞKUR registration and certificates and pass them to your mali müşavir. Your mali müşavir checks in SGK's employer system which incentive the person qualifies for and selects the number on the return. Asking them every month for "which incentive was selected" is your right.

Questions to ask your mali müşavir

• Do I have any overdue debt at SGK, including all my workplaces?
• On this month's return, which law number was selected for each employee?
• Is my workplace's activity code correct? Do I count as manufacturing?
• Is there an incentive for the person I'm thinking of hiring? What should I do before they start?
• Was there a month in the past when the incentive was lost, and why?

That day Sibel Hanım asked her mali müşavir for one more thing: each time a month's return is filed, a short message saying "sent, this incentive was selected". Last month's discount is gone; but from now on she scans the card at the till every month.