A hotel's monthly tax calendar: VAT, payroll, accommodation tax and tourism share

A hotel in Türkiye files a VAT return, a combined withholding and payroll return, and an accommodation tax return for every month it operates. The tourism share is monthly for corporate taxpayers and quarterly for everyone else. Accommodation tax is due by the evening of the 26th of the following month; the tourism share by the last day.

The accommodation tax is filed and paid by the 26th; the tourism share waits until the end of the following month, so the two can fall due days apart, and the earlier one is the easier to miss. This article puts the whole month on one page: which returns a lodging business in Türkiye meets, who prepares each number, what the hotel hands to the accountant, and how a hotel tax calendar for Türkiye is rebuilt each year from the Revenue Administration's published dates.

Which returns does a hotel in Türkiye file, and who prepares each one?#

A lodging business meets four monthly returns and one that is monthly or quarterly. The split of work matters more than the list: the hotel produces the transactions, the accountant produces the returns.

The four monthly items, in plain words, are the VAT return (1 No.lu), the combined withholding and payroll return (muhtasar ve prim hizmet beyannamesi), the accommodation tax return (konaklama vergisi), and, where it applies, the VAT withheld by buyers (2 No.lu). The fifth item is the tourism share (turizm payı), monthly for corporate taxpayers and quarterly for everyone else.

Each return has its own period, its own deadline and its own competent tax office. A calendar with one row per month hides this; a calendar with one row per return shows it. For definitions of each levy, see our glossary of hotel taxes and levies in Türkiye.

This article deliberately leaves to the accountant the questions of rates, exemptions, whether a particular transaction is in scope, and how cancellations, no-shows and agency invoices are treated. Three sources do three different jobs: Law No. 6802 Article 34 fixes the accommodation tax period and the 26th; Law No. 7183 Article 6 and the Tourism Share Return General Communiqué fix the tourism share periods; the Revenue Administration's tax calendar fixes the actual date for a given month.

The working rule: a printed date list is a snapshot, the rule behind it is stable, and the calendar is the authority on the day.

Which returns fall due every month: VAT, payroll and accommodation tax?#

VAT, the combined withholding and payroll return, and the accommodation tax fall due every month the hotel operates, each on its own date.

The VAT return (1 No.lu) reports the month's output VAT on sales minus the input VAT the hotel deducts. In the Revenue Administration's tax calendar read on 7 November 2026, September 2026 fell on 28 October, October on 30 November and November on 28 December.

The combined withholding and payroll return carries income and corporate tax withheld under Income Tax Law Article 94 and Corporate Tax Law Articles 15 and 30, together with social security contributions. The same snapshot put September at 26 October, October at 26 November and November at 28 December.

VAT withheld by buyers (2 No.lu) is not universal: it appears when the hotel withholds VAT on a payment instead of the supplier charging it. Where it applies, the snapshot dates were 26 October, 25 November and 25 December 2026. Ask the accountant whether it applies to your payments. Stamp duty withheld from payments, where it applies, also sits on the monthly page: October 2026 fell on 26 November in the same snapshot.

Watch the ordering, not just the dates. In that snapshot the accommodation tax came due on the 26th and the VAT return on the 28th, so the month's revenue has to be closed before the VAT figures are final. The mechanism behind the date: the front office closes the business day, the accountant maps the ledger to the return. If the month is not closed, the figure is estimated and corrected later, which costs the hotel time in the following month.

Is the tourism share monthly or quarterly?#

Monthly for corporate taxpayers, quarterly for everyone else, and the return must reach the tax office electronically by 23:59 on the last day of the month after the period, with payment in the same time.

The four quarterly periods are January to March, April to June, July to September, and October to December. The rule comes from the Tourism Share Return General Communiqué, Serial No. 1, published in the Resmî Gazete on 2 November 2019 under the authority of Law No. 7183 Article 6. For what the share itself covers, see what lodging businesses pay and report as tourism share.

A return is required even when the period produced no net sales or rental income: the filer ticks the box stating there is no tourism share to declare. That single rule is why a quiet quarter still has a deadline. The competent tax office is the one the taxpayer is attached to for income or corporate tax; others file at the office for the individual's residence, or for the entity's legal seat or workplace.

In the calendar read on 7 November 2026, a corporate taxpayer's September 2026 share fell on 2 November, October on 30 November and November on 31 December; a quarterly filer's July to September 2026 period fell on 2 November 2026.

The consequence for a corporate hotel: the tourism share for a month falls due later than the accommodation tax for the same month, so the two figures are prepared at different times but must reconcile to the same revenue.

What must the hotel hand to the accountant, and by when?#

The hotel's job is to deliver a closed month: revenue split by tax treatment, the guest ledger, invoices and the payroll file, early enough that the earliest deadline of the month is met, not the latest.

Work backwards from the earliest date in the month. In the snapshot read on 7 November 2026 that was the 26th for accommodation tax, two days before the VAT return. A fixed internal handover date, for example the fifth working day of the following month, is an owner's decision and not a legal date. It exists so the legal date is never the first time anyone looks at the numbers.

The accommodation tax base is a front-office question as much as an accounting one: the front office and the accountant must work from one agreed definition of a night's revenue, and the base itself is for the accountant to confirm. A useful check before sending: the accommodation tax figure and the tourism share figure for the same month should trace back to the same revenue lines. If they do not, one of the two is wrong.

Keep the handover in writing, with the date it was sent. When a return is filed late or corrected, the record shows where the delay sat. For a fuller version of this routine, see our month-end checklist for the accommodation tax return.

What happens in the months a seasonal hotel is closed?#

The accommodation tax has no period in a month the business does not operate, but the tourism share return does not disappear: a nil return is still filed.

Article 34 of Law No. 6802 defines the accommodation tax period as each month of the calendar year in which the business operates. A closed month is therefore outside that calendar. Whether a nil return is still expected for the other monthly returns in a closed month is a separate question; ask the accountant to confirm it for your company rather than assuming either answer.

The tourism share is the one that never empties: a corporate hotel files twelve returns a year and a quarterly filer four, opening or closed, with the no-share box ticked where nothing was earned. The opening and closing months are the hard ones: part-month revenue, staff kept on the payroll, and a first month back that needs the same handover pack as a full month. If you are weighing when to open and close at all, our week-by-week contribution test for opening and closing a seasonal hotel covers the economics.

Practical step: mark the closed months on the calendar in advance and mark the first open month as a full handover month, so nobody treats the restart as a soft month.

What else sits on the year, and how do you keep the calendar current?#

Provisional tax returns and the annual income or corporate tax return also belong on the same page, with their periods and dates taken from the Revenue Administration's calendar, and every date on it has to be rebuilt from that calendar each year.

This article does not restate the provisional and annual dates, because they depend on the taxpayer's type and because a snapshot taken in November goes stale within a year. Take them from the calendar itself. The annual return is where the year's accommodation tax returns and tourism share returns have to reconcile with the books, so the monthly discipline is what makes the annual one cheap.

The date-shift rule: when a deadline falls on a weekend or a public holiday, or the Revenue Administration extends a period, the published date moves while the rule in the law stays. Name the rule, then check the date. Rebuild the calendar once a year from the Revenue Administration's tax calendar, print it, and look at the calendar again in the week the return is due. Do not carry last year's printout forward, and do not carry a fixed list from any article, including this one, into next year.

A one-page hotel tax calendar to copy#

Copy the rows, not the dates: the rule in each row stays, the dates are a snapshot read on 7 November 2026 and must be checked against the Revenue Administration's calendar.

Add two rows of your own: the internal handover date, and the closed months for a seasonal property. Print it, put it where the month is closed, and mark each row as it is filed and paid.

What to do next#

Rebuild the calendar from the Revenue Administration's tax calendar this week, put the 26th and the last day of the month on it, and agree with your accountant who produces which number. Then fix the hotel's own handover date so the earliest deadline of the month is never the one that slips. The three parts fit together: the law fixes the rule, the calendar fixes the date, and the hotel fixes the handover.