Status date: 5 September 2026. Status: In force. Instrument: Presidential Decision on the withholding rates in provisional article 67 of Income Tax Law no. 193 (Decision no. 11734), Official Gazette of 5 September 2026, issue 33361. The text it amends is the Decision annexed to Council of Ministers Decision no. 2006/10731 of 22 July 2006.
If you hold a Turkish company and park its idle cash in a fund, the line item you never had to model was withholding. That changed on Saturday. Below is what the amended sub-item says, the question its drafting leaves open, and the reading we are working with today.
What the text says
The Decision rewrites one provision only: sub-item (2) of paragraph (a) of the first paragraph of article 1 of the Decision annexed to Decision 2006/10731. The replacement splits that sub-item into two rows.
Row (i) names two groups together: taxpayers within the first paragraph of article 2 of Corporation Tax Law no. 5520, and those taxpayers operating exclusively to earn returns and capital gains from securities and other capital market instruments whom the Ministry of Treasury and Finance has determined to be similar in nature to investment funds and investment companies established under Capital Markets Law no. 6362. For that group the rate on gains from participation shares in money market funds, and in hedge funds carrying the words "para piyasası" (money market) in their name, is 10 per cent. On their other gains the rate is nil.
Row (ii) covers everyone outside row (i), at 10 per cent, and only for gains falling outside sub-item (1).
The mechanism that matters sits in the commencement article. The Decision took effect on its publication date, 5 September 2026. For the row (i) group it applies both to units acquired on or after that date and, for units acquired before it, to the part of the gain corresponding to the period running from the publication date to the date the units are disposed of. An existing position is not grandfathered out; the gain is cut at the 5 September 2026 line and only the later slice falls into the 10 per cent charge.
| Who | Which gain | Rate | Basis |
|---|---|---|---|
| Article 2/1 corporation taxpayers and Ministry-designated fund-like taxpayers | Money market fund units and hedge fund units named para piyasası | 10% | Sub-item (2), row (i) |
| The same group | All their other gains | 0% | Sub-item (2), row (i) |
| Everyone outside row (i) | Gains falling outside sub-item (1) | 10% | Sub-item (2), row (ii) |
| Investment fund units generally | Funds other than equity-intensive funds and venture capital or real estate funds held over two years | 17.5% | Sub-item (1), row (ii), Decision 11107 |
What the text does not say
Row (ii) draws an express boundary: it reaches only gains outside sub-item (1). Row (i) carries no such boundary. It fixes 10 per cent on money market fund gains and nil on other gains for the taxpayers it names, and it refers to sub-item (1) nowhere.
Two readings follow. On the first, row (i) is complete for those taxpayers, so the 17.5 per cent row that sub-item (1) sets for investment fund units does not reach a corporate portfolio, because a rate for that portfolio is set here. On the second, the lower-numbered sub-item applies first, sub-item (1) governs fund units for companies as well, and row (i) only picks up what is left.
We cannot show from a written source which reading the administration applies. Nothing in the Decision resolves it. If a communiqué or a ruling appears, we will update this page with a dated note.
One thing we did not read also belongs here. We could not open the wording of this sub-item as it stood immediately before the change: the consolidated text of Decision 2006/10731 is not published in the Legislation Information System, and the original 2006 text carries none of the present sub-item structure. So we are not writing a sentence of the form "the rate rose from X to Y".
The reading we work with
The commencement rule points the way. Cutting the gain on an existing holding at a date would serve no purpose if the rate on that holding were already 10 per cent; apportionment of that kind belongs to an increase. On that reading, a group treasury that keeps Turkish lira balances in a money market fund should recalculate the post-tax return on everything earned after 5 September 2026.
Two practical consequences follow. Where units were bought before 5 September 2026, you will need a record at disposal showing which part of the gain falls after that line, and we would rather that record sat in your own file than only with the distribution platform. And fund selection now carries a tax question: row (i) names money market funds and hedge funds whose title contains "para piyasası", so the dividing line runs through the fund's type and its registered name.
What did not change
Provisional article 67 itself is untouched; this is a rate decision. The Decision does not reach paragraph (d), which governs withholding on deposit interest and profit shares on participation accounts. The window for government bonds, treasury bills and lease certificates issued by asset leasing companies, extended to 31 December 2026 by Decision 11444, stands. The 17.5 per cent and nil rows for investment fund units remain as Decision 11107 left them in March 2026. The amended sub-item draws its line by type of taxpayer, not by residence.
How to verify
The full text sits in the Official Gazette of 5 September 2026: resmigazete.gov.tr/eskiler/2026/09/20260905-12.pdf. The line to find is the quoted sentence opening article 1, "2) (1) numaralı fıkrada yer alan oran;", followed by rows (i) and (ii). For the apportionment rule read article 2(a) and its phrase "yayımı tarihinden katılma paylarının elden çıkarıldığı tarihe kadar geçen süreye isabet eden kısmına". The neighbouring rates are in the same archive: Decision 11107 of 27 March 2026 and Decision 11444 of 20 June 2026.
For readers who invest into Türkiye through a company or a fund, this sits directly after our note on remote identification for foreign investors: that one covers how the account is opened, this one how the money in it is taxed. If you would like to read your own structure against these rows, our Türkiye fintech and crypto page is the way to reach us, and later movement on this heading collects on our Legal Updates page.
