The question I am asked most often by people who have bought a flat in Turkey, taken a residence permit, or started working from Istanbul for a foreign employer is the same one, and it is usually asked too late: am I now a Turkish tax resident? The answer does not come from the residence permit, the title deed or the number of days a treaty happens to mention. It comes from two short articles of the Income Tax Law that were written in 1960 and have barely changed, from an exception list that covers more foreigners than they expect, and, where two states both claim the person, from the tie-breaker in the treaty between them. This page sets out the tests as the statutes state them, what turns on the answer, the company version of the same question, and the two directions in which a certificate of residence travels: the foreign certificate a Turkish payer needs before it applies a treaty, and the Turkish certificate a new resident needs to show a bank or a tax office abroad.
Sources, checked 9 September 2026. Income Tax Law No. 193, Articles 3 to 8 and 92; Turkish Civil Code No. 4721, Articles 19 and 20; Corporate Tax Law No. 5520, Article 3; Double Taxation Agreements General Communiqué Series No. 4 (Official Gazette 30192, 26 September 2017), section 3.3.2; the Revenue Administration's Interactive Tax Office user guide, section 14.2.5; Income Tax General Communiqué Series No. 333 (Official Gazette 33300, 4 July 2026); the Turkey-United States and Turkey-United Kingdom treaties, Article 4.
The two tests in Article 4, and the one that is not there
Article 3 of the Income Tax Law taxes persons "settled in Turkey" on their worldwide income, and Article 4 gives two independent ways of being settled. The first is domicile: a person whose domicile is in Turkey is resident, and domicile is defined by Article 19 of the Civil Code as the place where a person lives with the intention of staying permanently; a person has only one domicile, and under Article 20 a domicile is not lost until a new one is acquired, while a person who has given up a foreign domicile without yet acquiring one in Turkey is treated as domiciled where they currently live. The second is presence: a person who stays in Turkey continuously for more than six months in a calendar year is resident, and temporary absences do not interrupt the count. Three features of the second test decide most of my files. It is a calendar-year test, so the count starts again on 1 January. It is six months, not 183 days; the 183-day figure that people quote comes from the employment income articles of the treaties and from other countries' statutes, and it is not the Turkish rule. And it is a rule of continuity with a tolerance for temporary absences, so a pattern of leaving for a fortnight every five months does not by itself defeat it. Article 3 adds one group by status rather than presence: Turkish citizens living abroad because they work for Turkish public bodies or for enterprises headquartered in Turkey remain resident, with a credit for foreign tax on the income earned there.
Who never becomes resident, however long they stay
Article 5 lists foreigners who are not treated as settled even if they stay longer than six months: business people, scientists, experts, officials, press correspondents and persons in a similar position who come to Turkey for a specific and temporary assignment or job, and those who come for education, medical treatment, rest or travel; and persons kept in Turkey by detention, imprisonment, illness or a similar cause beyond their control. The exception matters to the seconded engineer, the visiting academic and the patient in a long course of treatment, and it explains why an expatriate on a defined assignment can spend a year in Turkey without becoming resident. It does not rescue a person who has in fact moved: an assignment that has become open-ended, a family that has followed, a home that has been bought and furnished, all point towards a domicile under the first test, which Article 5 does not touch. The exception is applied to the facts, and I advise clients to keep the assignment letter, the return ticket and the foreign home rather than to rely on the label.
What turns on the answer
A resident is taxed in Turkey on income from everywhere, with foreign tax credited within the limits of the law and any treaty. A non-resident, under Article 6, is taxed only on income earned in Turkey, and Article 7 says when that is so, income type by income type: business income where the person has a permanent establishment or a permanent representative in Turkey and earns the income through it, with an exception for goods bought or made in Turkey and exported without a Turkish sale; agricultural income where the activity is in Turkey; employment income where the work is performed in Turkey or the pay is "evaluated" in Turkey, meaning paid in Turkey or charged to the accounts or profits of a Turkish payer; professional income where the service is performed or evaluated in Turkey; rental income where the property is in Turkey; investment income where the capital is invested in Turkey; and other gains where the transaction is performed or evaluated in Turkey. Article 8 borrows the permanent establishment definition from the Tax Procedure Law and defines the permanent representative as a person bound to the principal by an employment or agency contract and authorised to conduct transactions in the principal's name, with commercial agents, persons whose expenses the principal pays and consignment stockholders deemed representatives without more. The remote worker paid from abroad for work done in Turkey is the case that turns on the word "evaluated", and it is worked through on the remote salary page. Two consequences of residence are often missed. A person who becomes resident under Article 4 and had not been resident in the three previous years may qualify for the twenty-year exemption for foreign income introduced by Law No. 7582, whose implementing communiqué, Series No. 333, was published on 4 July 2026; the conditions are on the Law 7582 page. And under Article 92 a resident who leaves Turkey during the year must file the return for that year within the fifteen days before departure, not the following March.
The company version of the same question
Article 3 of the Corporate Tax Law makes a company fully liable if either its legal seat or its place of management is in Turkey, and liable only on Turkish-source income if both are abroad. A company incorporated abroad but run from a desk in Istanbul, where the decisions are taken and the transactions are gathered and directed, can therefore be a Turkish resident company on its worldwide profits, and the shareholder's own move to Turkey is the usual cause. The tests, the risks and the structures that avoid an accidental Turkish head office are on the corporate residence page, and the rate and minimum tax a resident company then faces are on the corporate tax page.
When two states both claim you: the treaty tie-breaker
Residence under Turkish law is the first step; it is not the last where the other state also treats the person as resident under its own law. Every Turkish treaty then applies a tie-breaker in its Article 4. In the treaties with the United States and the United Kingdom, which follow the common pattern, a "resident of a Contracting State" is a person liable to tax there by reason of domicile, residence, place of management or a similar criterion, excluding a person liable only on income from sources in that state; where an individual is resident in both, the person is deemed resident where a permanent home is available, then, if a home is available in both, where personal and economic relations are closer, the centre of vital interests, then where the habitual abode is, then in the state of nationality, and finally by mutual agreement of the two administrations. The order matters: a person who keeps a home in both countries is decided by the centre of vital interests, which is a question of family, work, assets and life, not of days. The treaty result governs the treaty's allocation of taxing rights; it does not repeal Article 4 for Turkish domestic purposes, and the return still has to be filed on the domestic footing with the treaty applied inside it. The list of treaties and the mechanics of relief are on the treaty directory page, and the two national pages that most readers of this page need are the US treaty page and the UK treaty page.
The certificate that comes into Turkey
A foreign resident who receives Turkish-source income and wants the treaty applied at source must prove residence abroad. Communiqué Series No. 4, section 3.3.2, requires a certificate of residence from the competent authority of the other state, presented in original with a Turkish translation certified by a notary or by a Turkish consulate, to the tax office or to the Turkish payer, who keeps it for inspection; without it the payer applies domestic law whatever the treaty says, and a certificate issued for a calendar year is accepted until the fourth month of the following year. The certificate is the recipient's, not the group's: a treaty with a holding company's state does not help a beneficial owner resident elsewhere. The withholding rates the certificate reduces are on the withholding tax page.
The certificate that goes out of Turkey
A person who has become resident in Turkey will sooner or later be asked by a foreign bank, a former employer's payroll department or a foreign tax office to prove it, and the document is the Revenue Administration's certificate of residence, the mukimlik belgesi. It is requested through the Interactive Tax Office, the Administration's online portal, under the petitions menu as a "certificate of residence request"; the Administration's user guide describes a two-step petition in which the applicant selects or enters the address to which the certificate is to be posted by registered mail and confirms the request, after which its progress is followed under the petitions section of the same portal. Foreign nationals apply with their Turkish tax identification number, which is also the number the bank opened the account under, as described on the bank account page. The certificate states residence for a year, so a person who moved in the second half of a year should expect questions about that year from both sides, and should keep the evidence of the six-month count and of the domicile: the lease or deed, the utility contracts, the school enrolments and the entry and exit stamps.
What does not decide the question
Three things are treated as decisive by newcomers and are not. A residence permit is an immigration status; it neither creates nor prevents tax residence, as the comparison on the residence status page explains, and a retiree's permit is examined on the retirement page. Owning property does not by itself make a person resident, although a furnished home that is lived in is the strongest evidence of a domicile. And keeping under 183 days is not the Turkish test; the domestic rule is six months in a calendar year with temporary absences ignored, and the domicile test applies regardless of days.
Whose side we are on, and how we are paid
The bank asks for the certificate on the day of the transfer and does not tell you which year it should cover. The foreign accountant reads the treaty and not Article 4. The Turkish payer withholds at the domestic rate until paper arrives. None of them is paid to tell you, before you cross six months, that you are about to become resident on your worldwide income, or, before you leave, that the return is due in the fortnight before departure.
We take no commission or referral fee from banks, accountants or relocation agents, in any form, on any file. The fee you pay us is our only income from your matter, and it does not depend on whether you become resident or on how much tax the answer produces. Because our position does not move with the outcome, telling you that you are already resident, or that the exception in Article 5 does not fit your facts, costs us nothing to say.
One boundary, stated plainly. We are lawyers, not licensed investment advisers and not your home-country tax preparers. We do not tell you what your own state will decide about your residence there. What we protect is the Turkish legal position: the Article 4 analysis on your facts, the Article 5 exception where it applies, the source rules for what remains taxable if you are not resident, the treaty tie-breaker, the certificates in both directions, and the return that residence or departure requires.
Before the sixth month
Send us your entry and exit dates for the calendar year, your housing arrangements in Turkey and abroad, where your family lives, who pays you and from where, and any assignment letter or contract. We will tell you whether you are resident under Turkish law and from when, whether an exception applies, how a treaty would break a tie, what to file and by when, and how to obtain or present the certificate you need. Our cross-border tax work is described on the international tax page.
What this page does not settle
The taxation of particular income types once residence is settled, the foreign tax credit calculation, exit and departure formalities for a business, the residence of trusts and partnerships, social security residence, which follows different rules, and the position of Turkish citizens abroad in detail are separate subjects. Court practice on the domicile test is not summarised here.
