Income tax in Türkiye is charged on individuals under Income Tax Law No. 193 at five progressive rates, 15, 20, 27, 35 and 40 per cent, the 2026 brackets running from 190,000 to 5,300,000 lira. A person is a Turkish tax resident on either of two facts in Article 4: a domicile in Türkiye, or more than six months of continuous stay in a calendar year, and a resident is taxed on worldwide income while a non-resident is taxed only on income earned in Türkiye. Every figure on this page is read from the consolidated text of Law No. 193 as amended to June 2026 and from the 2026 tariff published by the Revenue Administration. Two things on this page decide most foreign files. Since 4 June 2026 a person who becomes resident with no Turkish domicile and no Turkish tax liability in the three preceding calendar years has every foreign-source gain and revenue exempt for twenty years, under a new Article 20/D that most guides written before the summer do not carry. And for a non-resident, income that was taxed by withholding in Türkiye, rent paid by a company, dividends, bank interest, is never declared at all: the withholding is the whole tax.
Residence, the twenty-year exemption and a non-resident’s position are worked out on the facts by Serka Law Firm’s tax and customs practice; write on WhatsApp at +90 530 127 59 35 or to info@serkalaw.com.
A remote worker reaches that six-month line sooner than expected, and the certificate they usually arrive on does not settle the question by itself: what the digital nomad visa in Turkey gives, and what it does not, is set out separately.
What are the income tax rates and brackets in Türkiye for 2026?
Article 103 sets the tariff and General Communiqué No. 332, published in the Official Gazette of 31 December 2025, sets the 2026 thresholds. The wage column is wider in the middle, so an employee reaches the 35 per cent band later than an investor or a landlord.
| Taxable income in 2026 | Tax on income other than wages | Tax on wages |
|---|---|---|
| Up to 190,000 TL | 15% | 15% |
| 190,000 to 400,000 TL | 28,500 TL plus 20% of the excess over 190,000 | the same |
| 400,000 to 1,000,000 TL | 70,500 TL plus 27% of the excess over 400,000 | 70,500 TL plus 27%, the band running to 1,500,000 TL |
| 1,000,000 to 5,300,000 TL | 232,500 TL plus 35% of the excess over 1,000,000 | 367,500 TL plus 35% of the excess over 1,500,000 |
| Above 5,300,000 TL | 1,737,500 TL plus 40% of the excess | 1,697,500 TL plus 40% of the excess |
The thresholds are revalued every year by communiqué, so a bracket table dated 2025 is already wrong for a 2026 return. Capital gains on property and shares are taxed on this same tariff, not at a flat rate; the five-year rule and the indexation that usually removes the gain are on the page on capital gains tax in Türkiye. Companies pay corporate tax under a separate law at 25 per cent, set out in the guide to corporate tax in Türkiye.
Who is a Turkish tax resident, and is it really a 183-day rule?
The statute does not say 183 days. Article 4 makes a person resident on either of two facts: a domicile in Türkiye within the meaning of the Civil Code, or staying in Türkiye continuously for more than six months in one calendar year, with the express rule that temporary departures do not interrupt the count. A residence permit is not a test in the article, and neither is citizenship: a Turkish citizen living abroad is a non-resident, and a foreign national who spends seven months of a year in Istanbul is a resident.
Article 5 then lists the foreigners who are not resident however long they stay: business people, scientists, experts, officials and press correspondents who came for a defined and temporary assignment, people in a comparable position, and anyone who came for study, medical treatment, rest or travel; and anyone kept in the country by detention, imprisonment, illness or another cause outside their control. An executive seconded to a Turkish subsidiary for a fixed project sits in that list, and the difference between the two articles is the difference between Turkish tax on a salary and Turkish tax on a worldwide estate. Where a double taxation treaty applies and both states claim the same person, the treaty’s own residence article decides, and it is read on the file before the statute is applied.
What does a non-resident foreigner pay Turkish income tax on?
Only on income earned in Türkiye, and Article 7 says what that means for each class. Rent, where the property is in Türkiye. Dividends and interest, where the capital is invested in Türkiye. Wages, where the work is performed in Türkiye, or paid or booked in Türkiye. Professional fees, where the service is performed or paid here. A gain on a sale, where the transaction is carried out or paid here. Commercial profit, only through a Turkish place of business or a permanent representative, and goods bought in Türkiye for export without a sale in Türkiye are outside it.
Article 86, second paragraph, is the provision that removes most non-residents from the filing system altogether: wages, professional fees, dividends, interest, rent and other gains that were taxed entirely by withholding in Türkiye are not declared. A foreign shareholder whose Turkish dividend suffered 15 per cent at source, a foreign owner whose shop is rented to a company that withholds 20 per cent, a foreign depositor whose interest was withheld by the bank, none of them files a Turkish return for that income. What a non-resident does declare is income that no one withheld: an apartment let to a private tenant, and a capital gain on a sale, which is filed within fifteen days of the sale on the special return the statute provides for non-residents.
What is the twenty-year exemption on foreign income introduced in 2026?
Law No. 7582 of 21 May 2026 added Article 20/D (mükerrer) to the Income Tax Law, in force since 4 June 2026 and applying to persons who became resident from 1 January 2026. Its first paragraph, in the statute’s own words, exempts from income tax for twenty years the gains and revenues earned outside Türkiye by a person who becomes resident here, on one condition: that in the three calendar years before becoming resident the person had neither a domicile in Türkiye nor a Turkish tax liability. The text says nothing about nationality, so a returning Turkish citizen who meets the three-year test is inside it on the words as much as a foreign investor.
The second paragraph is written for the foreign property owner. A prior Turkish liability that arose only from rent, dividends or interest, or a capital gain earned in Türkiye before the move does not bar the exemption, so an owner who has been declaring an Istanbul rental for years and now relocates is not excluded by that history. The exempt income is not declared and is not added to a return filed for other income. The price is stated in the same article: expenses attached to the exempt income cannot be deducted, foreign tax paid on it cannot be credited in Türkiye, and if the conditions are later found not to have been met the untaxed amounts are treated as tax lost, with the penalty and interest that follow. The Ministry of Treasury and Finance sets the procedure, so the file that protects the exemption is built before the move, on the three-year test, not after it.
How is rental income taxed, and what changed for landlords in December 2025?
Rent is taxed on a cash basis under Article 72: what was collected in the calendar year, for that year or earlier years, in money or in kind. For a building let as a dwelling, 58,000 lira of gross rent is exempt in 2026 under Article 21, and that exemption is lost entirely where rent above the threshold is not declared or is under-declared, and is not available to anyone whose gross wages, investment income and rent together exceed 1,500,000 lira, nor to anyone who must file for business or professional income. Above the exemption the landlord deducts either the real expenses listed in Article 74 or, without receipts, a flat 15 per cent of gross rent, and the flat method binds for two years once chosen.
Two rules in Article 74 change the arithmetic on a financed purchase. For one dwelling, 5 per cent of the acquisition cost is deductible every year for five years from the year of purchase, against that property’s rent only. And since Law No. 7566 of 4 December 2025, interest on the loan that financed the property is deductible only where the property is not let as a dwelling: a mortgage on a rented apartment no longer reduces the taxable rent, while a mortgage on a rented office still does. Where the tenant is a company or another withholding agent, it withholds 20 per cent of the rent under Article 94 and the landlord credits it on the return; a private tenant withholds nothing, and the landlord declares the rent in full. Small amounts of non-withheld rent and investment income, up to 22,000 lira in 2026, are outside the return altogether.
How are dividends and bank interest taxed for an individual?
A dividend from a Turkish company carries 15 per cent withholding at source, the rate set by Presidential Decision No. 9286 of 21 December 2024 for distributions from 22 December 2024, after three years at 10 per cent. For a resident individual Article 22/3 then exempts half of the dividend, and where the dividend is declared the whole of the tax withheld is credited against the tax on the return, which is why a resident shareholder on a modest dividend often ends the year with a refund rather than a bill. Dividends and rent that were withheld are not declared at all where, together with wages from more than one employer, they stay under the second bracket, 400,000 lira in 2026. Half of a dividend from a foreign company is also exempt under Article 22/4 where the resident holds at least 50 per cent of its paid-up capital and brings the dividend into Türkiye by the filing date.
Bank interest is taxed by withholding under Temporary Article 67 and the decisions made under it: 25 per cent on foreign-currency deposits, and on lira deposits opened or renewed since 9 July 2025, 17.5 per cent up to six months, 15 per cent up to a year and 10 per cent beyond a year, under Decision No. 10041. The withholding is the final tax on the interest for an individual and for a non-resident company alike. The rates and the decisions behind every row are on the page on withholding tax in Türkiye.
When is a salary declared, and when is the employer’s withholding the end of it?
Employers withhold income tax on wages at the Article 103 tariff, month by month. Under Article 86 a resident who is paid by one employer files no return for the salary at all, up to 5,300,000 lira in 2026. With more than one employer, no return is due where the wages after the first employer total no more than 400,000 lira and all wages together no more than 5,300,000 lira; above either figure the wages are declared and the withholding credited. Law No. 7582 also added an exemption for qualified staff of a service center recognized under the Foreign Direct Investment Law, on the part of the wage up to three times the gross minimum wage, five times inside an approved industrial zone or the Istanbul Finance Centre.
When is the return filed and the tax paid, and what happens on leaving Türkiye?
The annual return covers the calendar year and is filed from 1 to 25 March of the following year, a resident at the tax office of the place of residence and a non-resident through a Turkish representative or at the tax office of the place of business (Article 92). The tax is paid in two equal installments, March and July (Article 117). A person leaving the country during the year files the return in the fifteen days before departure, a rule that catches executives at the end of a posting. Tax withheld during the year is credited and any excess is refunded on application within a year (Article 121). A resident’s foreign income tax is credited under Article 123, but only up to the Turkish tax on that foreign income and only on a certificate from the foreign authority legalized by the Turkish consulate, and never on income covered by the twenty-year exemption. Losses from one source are set against the others and carried forward for five years (Article 88), a fall in capital never counting as a loss.
Who reads this before moving to Türkiye?
Three people. The investor relocating with a portfolio abroad, for whom the three-year test in Article 20/D has to be true on the day residence begins and cannot be repaired afterwards; the twenty-year exemption is planned before the six months run, not discovered at the first return. The foreign owner of a Turkish apartment, who is usually a non-resident with one item of income, rent, and who either files nothing because a company tenant withheld or files once a year in March because a private tenant did not, and who reads the five-year capital-gains clock before selling. And the seconded executive, whose salary from a single employer needs no return, who may be outside residence altogether under Article 5, and whose last act before the flight home is a return filed fifteen days before it.
Have the position put in writing before the move, not after the first return
We establish residence on the statute and the treaty for the client’s own country, apply the twenty-year exemption on the three-year evidence, structure rental and dividend income so that the withholding is final where the law allows it, and file the departure return on time, for clients in any country and in their own language. WhatsApp +90 530 127 59 35 · Email info@serkalaw.com. The wider structure is set out in our guide to the Turkish tax system; the withholding rates on every payment leaving Türkiye are on the withholding tax page; the disclosure window for assets held abroad, open until 31 July 2027, is on the asset amnesty page; and the deposit route to citizenship, where the interest withholding above applies to the qualifying deposit, is on Turkish citizenship by bank deposit.
This article is general information on Income Tax Law No. 193 as consolidated on 2 September 2026, with the 2026 figures from General Communiqué No. 332, and on Presidential Decisions No. 9286 and No. 10041; it is not advice on a particular return. Thresholds are revalued every year, and a treaty may displace any rate stated here.