Accommodation tax exemptions in Türkiye: who is outside the tax and how the invoice shows it

Accommodation tax (konaklama vergisi) is charged on overnight stays. Under the Accommodation Tax Implementation General Communiqué (Resmî Gazete, 14 December 2022) (opens in a new tab), student dormitories, student pensions and student camps are outside it, as are foreign diplomatic missions and international organisations on a reciprocal basis. Exempt sales use invoice type İSTİSNA with code 001 Diplomatik İstisna.

A guest at the desk asks for a bill without the accommodation tax, and the receptionist has two minutes and no procedure. The answer is not a judgement call about the guest; it is a document, a list and an invoice field. After reading this article your front office will know which three groups the accommodation tax exemption in Türkiye covers, what merely looks exempt, which paper to ask a diplomat for, and how the exemption is shown on an e-Fatura or e-Arşiv.

What does the accommodation tax cover?#

The tax applies to overnight stays at every facility that offers them, whatever its type or class and whether or not it holds a tourism operation certificate or a business licence. The guest's nationality and residence do not matter. This is the starting point for every exemption question, because the scope is wider than many desks assume. If you want the full mechanics of the tax, see what hotels charge accommodation tax on and how.

Facility type is irrelevant. A certified hotel, a boutique property, a guesthouse and an apartment block offering overnight stays all sit under the same rule. Guest nationality is equally irrelevant: a foreign passport, a foreign address or payment in euros changes nothing about the tax.

Services sold together with the stay are taxable even when the invoice shows them as separate lines. Room and breakfast, half board, full board and all inclusive are all in the base. Services sold to people who are not staying overnight are outside the tax, which is why a day guest using the spa or the meeting room is a different case from a resident guest.

The taxable event is the service, not the sale. An invoice issued to a travel agency before the stay does not show the tax. For a stay that runs across months, the tax falls in the month of the check-out day when the departure date is known in advance; otherwise it falls on the last day of each month. The base excludes VAT and includes late-payment, price and exchange differences; foreign currency is converted at the Central Bank buying rate on the date of the taxable event.

Who is exempt from accommodation tax?#

The communiqué names three groups and the list is closed: students in student accommodation, foreign diplomatic missions and consulates with their diplomatic members, and international organisations covered by international agreements. The student exemption covers services to students in student dormitories, student pensions and student camps. The diplomatic exemption covers, on a reciprocal basis, services to foreign diplomatic missions and consulates in Türkiye and to their members who hold diplomatic rights. The third group covers organisations, and their members, that an international agreement exempts from the tax.

The exemption attaches to the person and the purpose, not to the building. The same room is taxable for one guest and exempt for another on the same night.

Reciprocity is not a desk judgement. The guest's document is what the hotel acts on; the desk does not decide whether the guest's country would extend the same treatment. Anything not on the list stays taxable, whatever the facility is called and whatever the guest's reason for travelling. For the wider picture of Turkish hotel taxes and levies, see a glossary of hotel taxes and levies in Türkiye.

What looks exempt but is not?#

A facility's name, its public purpose or the guest's profession does not create an exemption; only the communiqué's list does. The most common desk errors come from categories that feel exempt.

Staff guesthouses and public guesthouses are in scope. The tax reaches every facility that offers overnight stays whatever its type, so an institution's guesthouse is taxable for its overnight guests. Care homes and similar social accommodation are not named in the exemption list, so a facility that provides overnight stays falls under the general rule; confirm the specific case with an adviser rather than deciding at the desk.

Free stays for owners, relatives, staff or third parties, including promotional stays, are not exempt; they are taxed at market value (emsal bedel). Teacher lodges (öğretmenevi) are a case that requires specific legal confirmation. The exemption list is closed and does not explicitly name them, so the safe position is to charge the tax until an accountant or the Revenue Administration confirms otherwise in writing.

Profession and duration create nothing either. Tour operators' staff, journalists, athletes and crew have no exemption by occupation, and the communiqué sets no exemption for long stays or residence-type bookings.

The diplomatic exemption: which document do you ask for?#

For the diplomatic exemption the guest presents a Ministry of Foreign Affairs document; keep a copy with the invoice. Ask at check-in, not at check-out: the document decides how the folio and the invoice will be built, and rebuilding them later costs more than asking once.

The exemption covers foreign diplomatic missions and consulates in Türkiye and their members with diplomatic rights, on a reciprocal basis. Record what was presented, by whom and on what date, and scan it into the guest's folio so the accountant sees the same paper the desk saw. Keep the document's scope with the invoice: it tells the accountant which services it covered, which matters when extras are sold to the same guest.

If no document is presented, charge the tax. A verbal claim of diplomatic status is not a document. When the document is presented, the invoice is issued as type İSTİSNA with exemption code 001 Diplomatik İstisna, not as an ordinary sale with the tax removed by hand. When invoicing foreign guests generally, identity fields and passport details follow their own rules; see identity fields and passport details when invoicing foreign guests.

Do weddings, meetings and events carry the tax?#

Organisation services such as weddings and meetings sold on their own are outside the tax. Sold together with rooms, the stay part is taxable, and the organisation part can be left out of the base if it is shown separately. An event with no overnight stay, a wedding reception or a one-day meeting, carries no accommodation tax.

When the event comes with rooms, the accommodation part is taxable. The organisation part is excluded from the base when its nature and amount are shown separately on the invoice or invoiced separately. The same separate-showing rule covers off-site services sold with a stay, such as transfers and tours.

Once the organisation part is separated, the accommodation part must be priced by an objective method and not below market value (emsal bedel). A nominal room price next to a large organisation fee is exactly the split the emsal bedel rule is meant to prevent. If the invoice shows one lump sum, the whole amount is the base. That is the trade-off: a single line is simpler to issue and more expensive in tax.

Keep the event contract, the rooming list and the invoice together, so the split can be defended months later. For how separate lines, refunds and receipts work in practice, see separate lines, refunds and receipts on hotel invoices.

How is the exemption shown on an e-Fatura or e-Arşiv?#

Taxable accommodation sales use invoice type SATIŞ with tax type code 0059. Exempt sales use invoice type İSTİSNA with exemption code 001 Diplomatik İstisna. These rules come from the GİB notice of 28 December 2022 (opens in a new tab) on showing the tax on e-Fatura and e-Arşiv.

For a sale within the exemptions, the invoice type is İSTİSNA and the accommodation tax exemption reason field carries 001 Diplomatik İstisna. The UBL-TR code list guide, version 1.43 (July 2026), still shows 001 as the only accommodation tax exemption code, so a second code on a blog is a warning sign, not a shortcut.

Where an invoice was issued before the service without the tax, a KONAKLAMA VERGİSİ type invoice showing only the tax is issued after the service. Invoice type and exemption code are two separate fields. Filling one and leaving the other empty produces a document that says two different things.

Print a code only from the current GİB list at the moment of issuing. Codes and lists are updated, and a copied code is not a defence.

A desk routine for "bu faturaya vergi yansımasın" requests#

Treat every request as a claim to be documented, not a favour to be granted: identify the ground, ask for the paper, and let accounting decide the doubtful ones. The routine has six steps, and each one leaves a trace an accountant can audit.

Step 1, the ground: ask which exemption is claimed, student accommodation, diplomatic mission, international organisation, or something else. Step 2, the paper: ask for the document. For the diplomatic case that is the Ministry of Foreign Affairs document; for the others, whatever the institution provides. Step 3, the list: check the ground against the communiqué's closed list. If it is not on the list, the tax stays on the bill.

Step 4, the record: note the decision, the document and the name of the person who approved it on the folio. Step 5, the escalation: send unclear cases, such as teacher lodges, care homes or institutional guesthouses, to the accountant before the invoice is issued. Step 6, the correction: if the tax was charged in excess or in error, refund the guest first and then correct the return. Returns are filed electronically every month, including months with no taxable transactions. For what the correction does to the books, see the hotel's entries and the company guest's expense for accommodation tax.

What to do next#

Write the six-step routine into your front office procedure this week and give accounting the document list that goes with it. The parts fit in one order: scope decides whether the tax exists at all, the closed exemption list decides who is outside it, and the e-document fields record which of the two applied. Where the communiqué does not settle a case, the answer is your accountant, not the desk.