Tax-advisor plan: BYOS is prohibited
If your account is on the tax-advisor (SMMM/YMM) plan, the BYOS option is hidden in Settings → Storage. This is a deliberate compliance decision driven by Turkish law.
Legal reasoning
TTK Article 82 (Turkish Commercial Code)
Commercial books and supporting records must be kept in Turkey and available for inspection for 10 years. Storing client records on Google Drive (US/EU multi-region) or OneDrive (EU) would breach this residency requirement.
VUK Article 253 (Tax Procedure Law)
Tax-related records must remain accessible to the Revenue Administration (GİB) on request. Foreign cloud providers cannot guarantee uninterrupted Turkey-jurisdiction access.
KVKK Article 9 (Cross-border transfer)
While KVKK § 9 allows cross-border transfer with explicit consent for personal use, tax-advisors operate as data processors for their clients (the mukellef). The clients have not consented to their financial records being transferred abroad — only to their advisor processing them in Turkey.
What this means in practice
On the tax-advisor plan:
- ✅ Hosted storage (PratikYedek VDS in Turkey) — default and only option
- ✅ Encrypted with AES-256-GCM; keys derived locally
- ✅ WAL + PITR backups within Turkey infrastructure
- ❌ Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox, S3 — all hidden
Mixed-plan tax advisors
If a tax-advisor has personal data on a separate personal plan account, they can use BYOS there. The restriction applies to the tax-advisor plan only.
Migration from BYOS to tax-advisor
If you upgrade a personal/SME account to a tax-advisor plan:
- PratikYedek detects existing BYOS connections
- A migration wizard offers to copy chunks from BYOS to hosted storage
- After successful migration, BYOS is disconnected
- The migration is logged (KVKK § 12 audit evidence)
Why we made this strict
We considered allowing tax advisors to opt-out of BYOS on a per-client basis, but:
- TTK § 82 is categorical — books in Turkey, full stop
- A single mukellef's data leaking to a non-Turkey region creates legal exposure for the advisor
- The cost of a single GİB inspection finding is far higher than the storage savings
Tax advisors who specifically need cross-border data residency (e.g., for foreign-resident clients) should contact us — we can discuss bespoke deployments.
See also: