Individuals pay no income tax on Borsa Istanbul share gains: under Provisional Article 67 of Law No. 193, extended to 31 December 2030, the withholding rate is 0% and nothing is declared, and Turkish company shares held over one year are untaxed (investment trust shares excepted). Turkish dividends carry 15% withholding; residents declare the taxable half only above 400,000 Turkish Lira in 2026. Tax residents (domicile, or over six months in a calendar year) must declare gains and dividends on foreign shares, with PPI indexation and foreign tax credit, unless Article 20/D applies.
Many foreigners who live in Türkiye hold a mix of Borsa Istanbul shares bought through a Turkish broker and US or European shares kept with an overseas platform. The two portfolios are taxed in completely different ways. Three developments make 2026 a good moment to check your position: the special withholding regime for Turkish securities in Provisional Article 67 of the Income Tax Law has been extended until 31 December 2030; the declaration thresholds have been raised for the 2026 calendar year; and, from 4 June 2026, a new Article 20/D exempts the foreign income of certain newly arrived residents for twenty years. This article explains who is taxed in Türkiye, how Borsa Istanbul gains and dividends are treated, what a Turkish tax resident must declare on foreign shares, how double tax treaties work in practice, and where foreign investors most often go wrong.
Everything starts with your tax status. The Income Tax Law, Law No. 193, does not look at nationality or at the type of residence permit you hold. It asks whether you are Türkiye'de yerleşmiş, meaning settled in Türkiye for tax purposes. The answer decides whether Türkiye taxes your worldwide income or only income that arises in Türkiye. Our separate guide on tax residency in Türkiye covers the test in more depth; the points that matter for shareholders are set out below.
Under Article 4 of Law No. 193, two groups of people are treated as settled in Türkiye. The first is anyone whose domicile, as defined in Article 19 and following of the Turkish Civil Code, Law No. 4721, is in Türkiye. The second is anyone who stays in Türkiye continuously for more than six months within one calendar year. Temporary trips abroad do not interrupt the period. The test is applied per calendar year, so a person who arrives in September and stays until the following May may not exceed six months in either year, while a person who arrives in February and remains will normally become resident in that same year.
Article 5 lists foreigners who are not treated as settled even if they stay longer than six months. These are business people, scientists, experts, officials, journalists and similar persons who come for a specific and temporary assignment, and people who come for study, medical treatment, rest or travel. People held in Türkiye by circumstances beyond their control, such as detention or illness, are also excluded. Whether a stay is truly temporary is a question of fact. A retiree who has rented a flat on a long lease, holds a residence permit and has moved his family will find it hard to argue that he is here only to rest or travel.
A person settled in Türkiye has full tax liability under Article 3 and is taxed on income earned both inside and outside Türkiye. A person who is not settled has limited liability under Article 6 and is taxed only on income earned in Türkiye. For a shareholder, this means a non-resident is concerned only with Borsa Istanbul income, while a resident must also consider US, European and any other foreign shares, subject to treaties and to the new exemption discussed in section 8.
Gains from selling shares through a Turkish bank or brokerage firm are governed by Provisional Article 67 of Law No. 193, a withholding regime introduced from 1 January 2006. The article was due to expire at the end of 2025, but Presidential Decision No. 10680, published in the Official Gazette on 11 December 2025, extended it until 31 December 2030. If you still need to open an account, our guide on how foreigners can trade on the stock exchange in Türkiye and open a bank account deals with the practical side; this article deals only with tax.
The intermediary bank or broker calculates the gain each quarter and withholds tax at source. The statutory rate in the article is 15%, but the President may set different rates, and for shares traded on Borsa Istanbul the rate for individuals, whether resident or non-resident, has been set at 0%. According to the Revenue Administration's February 2026 guide on Provisional Article 67, this 0% rate still applies. Paragraph 7 of the article provides that income subject to this withholding is not declared on an annual or separate return. In practice, therefore, a private individual who trades listed Turkish shares pays no income tax on the gain and files nothing.
For shares of Turkish resident companies that are traded on Borsa Istanbul and held for more than one year, paragraph 1 of Provisional Article 67 states that the withholding rules do not apply and that the general capital gains provision, Article Mükerrer 80, does not apply either. The result is that these gains are outside the tax net altogether. Shares acquired before 1 January 2006 remain subject to the rules in force on 31 December 2005, which is the origin of the old one year rule that still appears in some outdated articles.
The 0% rate does not cover shares of securities investment trusts, known in Turkish as menkul kıymet yatırım ortaklığı, a listed company whose business is managing a securities portfolio. Gains on these shares are withheld at a different, higher rate under the presidential decisions. Investment funds and exchange traded funds follow their own rules, which depend on the composition of the fund portfolio, so a fund that holds mainly Turkish equities is not taxed in the same way as a currency or bond fund. Check the fund's classification before assuming a 0% result.
Dividends are investment income, called menkul sermaye iradı, under Article 75 of Law No. 193. They are taxed differently from trading gains, and this is the area where resident foreigners most often have a filing obligation without realising it.
Article 94 requires the distributing company to withhold tax from dividends paid to individuals. The rate is set by presidential decision. Presidential Decision No. 9286, published on 22 December 2024, raised the rate from 10% to 15% for distributions made from that date. The withholding is made by the company before the money reaches your brokerage account, so the amount you receive is already net.
For a resident individual, Article 22(3) exempts half of the dividends received from Turkish resident companies. The other half is taxable. Under Article 86(1)(c), no return is needed if your taxable income that has already been subject to Turkish withholding (excluding a single employer salary) does not exceed the amount of the second bracket of the income tax tariff in Article 103. For the 2026 calendar year that amount is 400,000 Turkish Lira. If you exceed it, you declare the taxable half together with your other income in the return filed in March 2027, and the full amount withheld by the company, including the part attributable to the exempt half, is credited against the tax calculated on the return. In practice this often results in little or no extra tax for modest portfolios, but the return must still be filed once the threshold is crossed.
For a non-resident shareholder, the 15% withholding is the final Turkish tax and, under Article 86(2), no return is filed. A double tax treaty between Türkiye and your country of residence may cap the Turkish rate on dividends; where the treaty cap is lower than 15%, the reduced rate is normally applied only if a certificate of tax residence from your home country is provided to the company or intermediary in time. If it is not, the general rate is withheld and a refund must be pursued afterwards.
The table below summarises the position for individuals who do not hold shares as part of a business. It reflects the rules in force for 2026 and should be read with the sections above.
| Income | Current Rule |
|---|---|
| Borsa Istanbul shares held one year or less (resident or non-resident) | Withholding under Provisional Article 67 at 0%; no return |
| Borsa Istanbul shares of Turkish companies held more than one year | Outside withholding and outside Article Mükerrer 80; not taxed |
| Securities investment trust shares | Excluded from the 0% rate; higher withholding applies |
| Dividends from Turkish companies, resident individual | 15% withholding; half exempt; declare if over 400,000 Turkish Lira (2026); full withholding credited |
| Dividends from Turkish companies, non-resident | 15% final withholding, subject to any lower treaty rate; no return |
| Gains on foreign shares (for example US stocks), resident | Taxable capital gain under Article Mükerrer 80; annual return; PPI indexation if increase is 10% or more; no annual allowance |
| Dividends from foreign companies, resident | Taxable in full (no half exemption for portfolio holdings); declare if over 22,000 Turkish Lira (2026); foreign tax credit under Article 123 |
| Foreign income of qualifying new residents (Article 20/D) | Exempt for twenty years; no return; no foreign tax credit |
| Any share income, non-resident, foreign shares | Not taxed in Türkiye |
A resident who holds US, UK or European shares is in a very different position from a Borsa Istanbul investor. There is no withholding by a Turkish intermediary, no 0% rate and, unless Article 20/D applies, a real obligation to calculate and declare gains.
Paragraph 13 of Provisional Article 67 defines the securities covered by the article as those issued in Türkiye and registered with the Capital Markets Board, or traded on exchanges established in Türkiye, together with public sector issues. Shares of a US company listed on the New York Stock Exchange or Nasdaq do not meet this definition. The withholding regime therefore does not apply to them, and gains on their sale fall under the general rule in Article Mükerrer 80, which taxes gains on the disposal of securities as değer artışı kazancı, a capital gain.
Under Article Mükerrer 81, the net gain is the sale proceeds minus the acquisition cost and the costs of sale borne by the seller, such as commissions. Both figures must be expressed in Turkish Lira, which in practice means converting the purchase price at the Central Bank exchange rate of the purchase date and the sale price at the rate of the sale date. Because the lira has depreciated sharply against the dollar and the euro, a share that has not risen in dollar terms can still produce a large lira gain. Article Mükerrer 81 softens this by allowing the acquisition cost to be increased by the rise in the producer price index (Yİ-ÜFE) published by TurkStat, excluding the month of sale, provided the increase is 10% or more. The indexation is applied to the lira cost, so keep the trade confirmations and the dates of each purchase.
Article Mükerrer 80 excludes from tax gains on shares of Turkish resident companies held for more than two years. A US or European company is not a Turkish resident company, so this exclusion does not help, and a foreign share held for ten years is taxed in the same way as one held for ten days. The annual capital gains allowance in Article Mükerrer 80, which is 150,000 Turkish Lira for 2026, expressly does not apply to gains from securities and other capital market instruments. Gains are taxed at the progressive rates in Article 103, which for 2026 run from 15% to 40%. Losses on capital gains cannot be set against salary, rent or other categories of income under Article 88; how losses on one foreign share interact with gains on another in the same year is a matter of administrative practice that should be checked for the year concerned. The wider rules on capital gains, including property, are explained in our article on capital gains tax in Türkiye.
Dividends from foreign companies are investment income under Article 75. The half exemption in Article 22(3) applies only to Turkish resident companies. Article 22(4), added in 2023, extends a half exemption to dividends from foreign joint stock and limited companies only where the shareholder holds at least 50% of the paid in capital and transfers the dividend to Türkiye by the return deadline, which rules it out for ordinary portfolio investors. Foreign dividends are therefore taxable in full. Under Article 86(1)(d), investment income that has been neither subject to Turkish withholding nor exempt does not need to be declared if its total for the year does not exceed 22,000 Turkish Lira for 2026. Above that figure the whole amount is declared. The same reasoning applies to interest earned on cash balances held with an overseas broker.
Türkiye has a wide network of double taxation treaties, including one with the United States. A treaty does not normally remove Turkish tax for a Turkish resident; it allocates taxing rights and caps the tax that the other country may withhold, after which Türkiye gives relief. US holdings raise specific questions, such as the dividend withholding applied by US brokers and the position of US citizens, who remain within the US tax system wherever they live; see our separate guide to the Türkiye and US tax treaty for investors, and the broader overview of double taxation agreements in Türkiye.
Article 123 of Law No. 193 allows a full taxpayer to deduct from Turkish income tax the similar taxes paid abroad on foreign income. The deduction is limited to the part of the Turkish tax that corresponds to the foreign income, calculated by reference to the proportion of that income in total income. If the foreign tax is higher, the excess is lost. A dividend taxed at source in the United States is therefore declared in Türkiye in gross terms, and the US tax is credited up to the Turkish tax on that dividend.
The credit is not automatic. Article 123 requires that the foreign tax be a personal tax on income and that payment be proven by documents obtained from the competent foreign authority and certified by the Turkish embassy or consulate in that country. If the documents are not available by the payment date, the relevant part of the Turkish tax is deferred for one year; documents produced after that year are disregarded, subject to force majeure. Broker annual tax statements alone are often questioned, so plan the certification well before March.
Article 20/D was added to Law No. 193 by Law No. 7582 and published on 4 June 2026, applying to individuals treated as settled in Türkiye from 1 January 2026 onward. It exempts, for twenty years, income earned outside Türkiye by an individual who had no domicile and no tax liability in Türkiye in the last three calendar years before becoming resident. Earlier Turkish tax liability arising only from rental income, investment income or capital gains in Türkiye does not disqualify the person. Exempt foreign income is not declared, related costs are not deductible, and foreign taxes on that income cannot be credited. If it later emerges that the conditions were not met, the unassessed tax is treated as lost tax, with penalties. For a newly arrived foreigner with a US portfolio this can be decisive, but the implementing rules of the Ministry of Treasury and Finance and the source of each item of income must be checked. Our guide to the 20 year foreign income tax exemption explains the conditions in detail.
Article 92 provides that the annual income tax return for a calendar year is filed from the beginning of March to the 25th of March of the following year, although the Revenue Administration can extend the period and its February 2026 guide refers to a filing window of 1 to 31 March 2026 for 2025 income, so check the announcement for your year. Under Article 117, the tax is paid in two equal instalments in March and July. Most individuals file online through the Revenue Administration's prepared return system, which requires a tax identification number and login credentials; foreigners usually obtain these from their local tax office. A taxpayer who leaves Türkiye permanently during the year must file within the 15 days before departure. A summary of all key dates is in our article on tax declaration deadlines for foreigners.
Failure to declare taxable foreign gains or dividends leads to an assessment of the unpaid tax, late payment interest and a tax loss penalty, vergi ziyaı cezası, equal to one times the tax lost under Article 344 of the Tax Procedure Law, Law No. 213. Where a return is filed late but before a tax audit begins, the penalty is reduced by half. Article 371 of the same law allows a taxpayer to avoid the tax loss penalty entirely by voluntary disclosure, pişmanlık, if the disclosure is made before an audit or informant report, the return is filed or corrected within 15 days and the tax is paid within 15 days with a monthly surcharge. Exchanges of financial account information between tax administrations make undeclared foreign accounts increasingly visible, so voluntary disclosure is usually the safer route.
A German retiree has lived in Antalya since 2023 and holds Borsa Istanbul shares bought through a Turkish broker. She sells some after eight months and others after three years. The first sale is withheld at 0% and the second is outside the tax net; she files nothing for these gains. If her net Turkish dividends lead to a taxable half above 400,000 Turkish Lira in 2026, she must file for the dividends.
A British engineer resident in Istanbul since 2020 sells US shares bought in 2021. He must convert the cost and the proceeds into lira, index the cost by the producer price index if the increase is at least 10%, and declare the gain in March of the following year. If he also received US dividends above 22,000 Turkish Lira, he declares those in full and claims a credit for the US tax with certified documents.
An American who moved to Türkiye in 2026 after many years abroad, with no Turkish domicile or tax liability in the three previous years, may fall within Article 20/D, so that his foreign dividends and gains are exempt for twenty years. Because the exemption excludes foreign tax credits and penalties apply if the conditions were not met, the analysis should be documented at the start.
For individuals, gains on Borsa Istanbul shares are withheld at 0% under Provisional Article 67 and are not declared, and gains on shares of Turkish companies held more than one year are outside the tax net entirely. Securities investment trust shares are the main exception.
Under Article 4 of Law No. 193, a foreigner is resident if his domicile is in Türkiye or if he stays continuously for more than six months in one calendar year. Article 5 excludes people here for a specific temporary assignment, study, treatment, rest or travel.
Not by itself. The residence permit is an immigration document; tax residence depends on domicile and physical presence under Law No. 193, although a permit is evidence that the stay is not temporary.
Turkish companies withhold 15% from dividends paid to individuals under Presidential Decision No. 9286, in force since 22 December 2024. For non-residents this is the final Turkish tax unless a treaty provides a lower rate.
A resident declares only if the taxable half of Turkish dividends, together with other withheld income, exceeds 400,000 Turkish Lira for 2026. The whole tax withheld by the company is then credited against the tax on the return.
For a Turkish tax resident, yes: gains on US shares are taxable capital gains under Article Mükerrer 80 and dividends are taxable investment income, unless the new Article 20/D exemption applies. A non-resident is not taxed in Türkiye on foreign shares.
No. The two year rule in Article Mükerrer 80 applies only to shares of Turkish resident companies, and the one year rule in Provisional Article 67 applies only to Borsa Istanbul shares.
No. Article Mükerrer 80 expressly excludes gains from securities and other capital market instruments from the annual allowance, which is 150,000 Turkish Lira for 2026.
The lira acquisition cost may be increased by the rise in the producer price index, excluding the month of sale, if that rise is 10% or more under Article Mükerrer 81. If the rise is below 10%, no indexation is allowed.
Yes, under Article 123, up to the Turkish tax attributable to that income, provided you prove payment with documents from the foreign authority certified by the Turkish consulate.
The return for a calendar year is filed in March of the following year, and the tax is paid in two instalments in March and July under Articles 92 and 117 of Law No. 193.
The tax office can assess the tax with late payment interest and a tax loss penalty equal to the tax lost. A voluntary disclosure under Article 371 of Law No. 213, made before an audit begins, avoids the penalty if the return is filed and the tax paid within 15 days.
An individual who becomes resident from 2026 onward and had no Turkish domicile and no Turkish tax liability in the previous three calendar years, other than liability from Turkish rent, investment income or capital gains. Foreign tax on exempt income cannot be credited.
No. Account opening, required documents and bank procedures are covered in our separate guide on trading on the Turkish stock exchange as a foreigner, linked in section 2.
For a foreign individual, Borsa Istanbul shares are among the most lightly taxed investments in Türkiye: trading gains are withheld at 0% or not taxed at all, and dividends carry a 15% withholding that is final for non-residents and, for residents, leads to a return only above 400,000 Turkish Lira of taxable income in 2026. Foreign shares held by a Turkish tax resident are the opposite case: gains are taxed at progressive rates after lira conversion and indexation, there is no holding period exemption or allowance, foreign dividends are fully taxable above 22,000 Turkish Lira, and foreign tax is credited only with certified documents. The new Article 20/D exemption may remove much of this burden for qualifying new residents, but only if its conditions are met and documented.
The right answer depends on your residence history, where your shares are held and which treaty applies, and mistakes are expensive because penalties run with the unpaid tax. If you hold shares in Türkiye or abroad and want your position checked, a filing prepared or a voluntary disclosure handled, our tax law practice can review your documents and advise on the steps to take. Contact our legal team.
