Books and invoices at a pension: sole proprietor, company and document rules

A pension's books follow its legal form and class, not its size alone. All commercial companies are first-class merchants and keep a journal, general ledger and inventory book. For service-based activity such as lodging, a sole proprietor stays second class, on the business-account basis, until annual gross business revenue passes 1,200,000 TL. A proprietor who also buys and sells goods on a significant scale falls under different limits. Confirm your own case with an accountant.

A family turns a six-room house into a pansiyon. Before the certificate, the website or the first booking, the accountant asks one question: şahıs işletmesi or şirket? That answer decides which books the property keeps, which document each guest leaves with, and how much work lands on the owner every month. This article walks the chain for pension bookkeeping in Türkiye: legal form, book class, documents, the daily guest list, the simple method and the electronic invoice question, so you can walk into the accountant's meeting with the right questions.

Sole proprietor or company: what actually changes for a pension?#

The legal form decides the book class first and everything else second. A company is always a first-class merchant; a sole proprietor usually starts as a second-class merchant.

A sole proprietorship (şahıs işletmesi) has no separate legal personality. The business is the person, the profit is the owner's commercial earnings, and the owner answers for the debts with personal assets. A limited şirket or an anonim şirket, by contrast, is a separate legal person and a commercial company, and Article 177 of the Tax Procedure Law (opens in a new tab) places every commercial company in the first class.

In daily work, what changes is the books kept, the closing routine, how the owner takes money out of the business (drawings for a sole proprietor, salary or dividend for a company), and who signs what. What does not change with the form is just as important: the certificate, the identity notification, personal data duties, the daily guest list, the invoice duty and the accommodation tax all follow the activity, not the legal form.

The decision rule to bring to the accountant has four parts: expected annual revenue against the 1,200,000 TL line, whether the building is owned or rented and at what rent, how many people will own the business, and whether outside investors may join later. This article makes no recommendation. Liability, financing, family structure and the exit plan decide the form, and those are conversations with an accountant and a lawyer, not with a blog post.

Which book does a pension keep?#

It depends on the class. First-class merchants keep a journal, a general ledger and an inventory book; second-class merchants keep a single business account of income and expense.

Article 176 of the Tax Procedure Law sets the two classes; Article 182 names the balance-sheet books: the journal (yevmiye defteri), the general ledger (defterikebir) and the inventory book (envanter defteri). Article 177 puts in the first class those selling bought goods above 2,500,000 TL of annual purchases or 3,500,000 TL of annual sales, those in other work above 1,200,000 TL of annual gross business revenue, those doing both where five times business revenue plus sales exceeds 2,500,000 TL, all commercial companies, other corporate-tax payers, and anyone who chooses balance-sheet books.

These amounts apply from 1 January 2026. VUK General Communiqué No. 588 (Resmî Gazete, 31 December 2025, No. 33124, 5th repeat) set them by raising the 2025 figures by the 25.49% revaluation rate. A new business may act as a second-class merchant until its annual volume classifies it (Article 178), so a pension in its first year is usually second class unless it is a company.

Moving between classes has rules. A first-class merchant may step down if one period is more than 20% below the limits or three consecutive periods are up to 20% below; a second-class merchant steps up if one period exceeds the limits by more than 20% or two consecutive periods exceed them by up to 20% (Articles 179 and 180). A second-class merchant may also choose balance-sheet books voluntarily (Article 181), which some owners do when they expect growth or a bank loan.

The business account records income and expense for the year. It is not a cash book, and it does not replace the guest folio, which stays the property's own record of what each guest consumed. For how the folio feeds the accountant's ledger, see from the guest folio to the accountant's ledger.

The 2026 limits in one view#

Invoice, retail receipt or fiscal device: which document does a pension issue?#

Article 232 requires an invoice from every merchant, second class included; towards a consumer the invoice is compulsory only above 12,000 TL in 2026 or when the guest asks for one.

Four groups must issue invoices: first- and second-class merchants, merchants taxed on the simple method, and farmers who must keep books. A pension falls in one of the first three. Towards another merchant, a self-employed professional, a simple-method merchant, a book-keeping farmer or a tax-exempt artisan, an invoice is always required, and the pension must also ask for and take that buyer's invoice.

Towards a consumer, the invoice is required when the price exceeds 12,000 TL, the 2026 amount set by VUK General Communiqué No. 588, or when the guest asks for one even below that figure. Below the threshold and without a request, the sale is documented by a retail receipt or by a fiscal device (ÖKC, yazar kasa) at the outlet. Which device a given property must use is a question for the accountant and the local tax office, not a rule this article can settle.

The guest bill (folio) and the invoice are different things: the folio is the hotel's internal account of what was consumed, the invoice is the fiscal document that leaves the building. Documents are numbered in sequence; a mistake is corrected by voiding and reissuing, never by deleting a document from the book.

Does the daily guest list apply to a small pension?#

Yes. Article 240 of the Tax Procedure Law names hotels, motels and pensions, and it expressly includes taxpayers whose profit is determined by the simple method.

The list is prepared daily with consecutive serial and sequence numbers, following the property's room, section and bed plan, and it is kept at the business. It shows the taxpayer's name, surname, trade name if any, and address; each guest's name and surname with the room number and the room rate; and the date it was prepared.

The wording has a history worth knowing. Law No. 4369 of 22 July 1998 replaced "including those taxed on the lump-sum method" with "including those whose profits are determined by the simple method", so small properties were never outside the duty. The guest list is also not the identity notification: the list is the property's own record tying a room to a guest and a rate on a given night, while the identity notification is a separate duty sent from the check-in flow.

Whether the list may be kept on a computer is not settled by any text found for this article; ask the accountant and the tax office before replacing the paper book. A list that is filled in at the end of the week from the reservation screen is not a daily list, and it is the first thing a review will notice.

Can a pension be taxed on the simple method?#

Lodging is not among the activities the Income Tax Law bars from the simple method, but the conditions apply together, and rent and revenue decide the answer.

Article 46 of Income Tax Law No. 193 requires the trader to work in the business itself, not to be taxed on the real method for another commercial, agricultural or professional activity, to stay within the rent limit, and to stay within the volume limit. The rent condition in Article 47 is 99,000 TL inside metropolitan municipality limits and 60,000 TL elsewhere, using the equivalent rent for an owned workplace; these are the 2026 amounts set by Income Tax General Communiqué No. 332 (Resmî Gazete, 31 December 2025). The volume condition in Article 48 for work other than buying and selling goods is 600,000 TL of gross business revenue.

Article 51 lists the barred activities, among them partners in general partnerships, jewellers, insurance producers, real estate dealers and intermediaries. Lodging is not on that list, but the article also lets the President add business groups and sectors.

That power has been used. Presidential Decision No. 10380 (opens in a new tab) (Resmî Gazete, 9 September 2025, No. 33012), amended by Decision No. 10679 (Resmî Gazete, 11 December 2025, No. 33104) and effective 1 January 2026, requires real-method taxation in metropolitan municipalities for several activities, including restaurants and similar service businesses and places of entertainment and rest, with exceptions for districts of 30,000 or fewer residents and for former towns and villages of 2,000 or fewer. That last point matters to a pension that serves meals or runs a café: the activity next to the lodging can pull the taxpayer out of the simple method.

Article 240 of the Tax Procedure Law still speaks of lodging places whose profit is determined by the simple method, which confirms the method exists for this sector. It does not confirm that a particular property qualifies.

e-Arşiv and e-Fatura: where does a small pension stand?#

Electronic invoice duties depend on the taxpayer's own scope and turnover, and the thresholds change; a pension should confirm its position with its accountant rather than copy the hotel next door.

e-Fatura and e-Arşiv are electronic invoices, issued through a licensed integrator; the document is the same fiscal document, in a different form. Scope is decided per taxpayer, by activity and by turnover, and the figures move. This article deliberately states no dates or thresholds because they must be read from the current official text with the accountant; for the certificate rule on e-Fatura, see the certificate rule for e-Fatura.

Whatever the scope, human review before an e-invoice is sent is good practice: an invoice that has left cannot be recalled, only corrected. Accommodation tax is charged on accommodation services and must be shown correctly on the document; the rate and the exact base come from the current communiqué, not from a competitor's invoice. For how the tax is charged, see how accommodation tax is charged and shown.

Two separate questions to settle: whether the property must issue electronic invoices at all, and whether the software it uses can produce them with a review step.

What should you agree with your accountant in the first meeting?#

Bring five numbers and five questions, and leave with the book class, the document set and the monthly routine written down.

Numbers to bring: expected annual revenue, annual rent or the equivalent rent for an owned building, room and bed count, the expected split between company and individual guests, and whether meals or alcohol will be sold. Questions to ask: which class and which books; which document each guest type receives; who issues invoices and who reviews electronic ones; how the daily guest list is kept and archived; how accommodation tax is shown on documents.

Ask who is responsible for each duty, owner, reception or accountant, because most compliance failures are handover failures rather than knowledge failures. Ask for the monthly closing pack in writing, so the first month does not become an argument about which documents were expected; a simple starting point is a monthly income and expense sheet an owner can keep. Put the classification review in the calendar every January, when the revaluation figures change and the limits move with them.

What to do next#

Book the meeting with the accountant before the lease is signed or the certificate application is filed. Bring the five numbers, ask the five questions, and leave with the book class, the document set and the monthly routine in writing. The chain runs in one direction, from legal form to book class, from book class to the documents each guest receives, and from there to the daily guest list, the electronic invoice question and the taxes shown on the document. Getting the first link right makes the rest routine.