🇹🇷 Türkiye’s New Tax Package
Transit trade outside the İFM: granted a 95% tax exemption for the first time; a "20-year tax holiday" regime for high-net-worth individuals—the most compelling offering currently available on the global residency market.
On Friday, President Erdoğan unveiled a comprehensive tax incentive package at the Istanbul Financial Center (İFM).
In our assessment, this package is one of the most ambitious fiscal policy steps in recent years. Here is our breakdown of all six points in the package—and what they mean in practice.
🏭 1. Tax Rate for Manufacturing Exporters
Current landscape:
- Standard corporate income tax rate: 25%
- Exporters: 20% (a 5-percentage-point deduction)
- Manufacturing exporters registered with the Industrial Registry: 19%
Under the new package:
- Manufacturing exporters: 9%
- Other exporters: 14%
💼 2. Expansion of Istanbul Financial Center (İFM) Incentives
What has changed:
- Transit trade within the İFM: exemption raised from 50% to 100% (full exemption)
- Transit trade outside the İFM: granted an exemption for the first time—a 95% exemption
This marks the first time the İFM preferential regime has been extended beyond the boundaries of the financial center itself.
⚠️ Key point to clarify:
Transit trade (purchasing goods abroad → selling them abroad without physical import into Türkiye)
🏢 3. Regional Headquarters: 20 Years of Tax Incentives
Türkiye is inviting multinational corporations to relocate their Regional Headquarters (RHQ):
- Foreign operations managed from the İFM: 100% corporate income tax exemption
- The same operations conducted outside the İFM: 95% exemption
- Incentive period: 20 years
- Additional personal income tax incentives for qualified personnel
💻 4. Export of Services: Exemption Increased from 80% to 100%
Current landscape:
For the export of qualifying services, 80% of corporate earnings are exempt from corporate income tax:
- Architecture and engineering
- Design
- Software development
- Medical reporting
- Accounting services
- Call centers
- Data storage and hosting
Effectively, tax is levied on only 20% of the qualifying income.
Under the new package: a 100% exemption—effectively reducing the applicable tax to zero.
🏠 5. 20-Year Tax Holiday for Individuals Relocating to Türkiye
A flagship measure of the package targeted at international high-net-worth individuals.
Key conditions:
- The individual must not have been a tax resident of Türkiye for the preceding 3 years
- Upon establishing tax residency in Türkiye: a 20-year tax holiday on foreign-source income
- Inheritance and gift tax: just 1%
Context: Non-domicile regime
This represents the Turkish counterpart to the well-known British non-dom regime. Comparable regimes:
- Italy: active
- Portugal: phased out under EU pressure
- United Kingdom: abolished in 2024
Türkiye is entering this market niche precisely as competing jurisdictions are winding down their programs.
💰 6. Seventh "Asset Peace" (Wealth Amnesty)
Key parameters:
- Foreign-held cash, gold, and securities may be repatriated to Türkiye
- Tax rate: 2–3%, or potentially fully exempt from tax
- Full immunity from tax audits regarding the declared assets
Context:
This represents Türkiye's seventh asset amnesty program since 2008.
For service exporters (IT, consulting, engineering):
Now is the time to evaluate transitioning to technology development zones (technoparks) in combination with service export incentives. The new package has the potential to multiply the impact of existing frameworks.For regional headquarters:
Structure your operations in advance. Once the package is enacted into law, entities already licensed and registered within the İFM will be best positioned to benefit immediately.For high-net-worth individuals:
The "20-year tax holiday" regime is the most attractive program on the global residency market today. It deserves serious consideration as an alternative to the discontinued UK and Portuguese regimes.For holders of undeclared offshore assets:
The seventh asset amnesty may be your window of opportunity. Given the ongoing tightening of international automatic exchange of financial account information (CRS), subsequent windows may offer far less favorable terms.
We advise foreign investors and high-net-worth private clients on structuring their entry into Türkiye under the new tax regimes: from establishing an entity in the İFM and securing Regional Headquarters status to transferring tax residency under the "20-year tax holiday" program and regularizing foreign assets within the asset amnesty framework.