Invoicing foreign guests in Türkiye: identity fields, passport details and currency

In Türkiye, an invoice to a foreign guest must show the buyer's identity as the Revenue Administration (GİB) guidance requires, a passport number only where a specific rule demands it, and, for a foreign-currency invoice, the Turkish lira equivalent unless the customer is abroad. Your accountant sets the rate.

A guest from Germany settles her bill in euros at 06:40, the airport shuttle is already outside, and the desk has to decide what goes in the tax number field, whether to ask for the passport, and which rate to print on the document. The answers come from three different places: GİB guidance, the Tax Procedure Law, and your accountant. After reading this article, your desk will know which question belongs to which source, and you will have a one-page rule that answers all three before the next early checkout.

Who is the buyer on the invoice?#

The buyer is whoever the invoice is legally issued to, and that is settled before the document is created: a foreign individual, a foreign company, or a foreign tour operator paying for a group. These three buyers behave differently on the document. An individual pays their own bill and their identity data comes from the passport. A company with a corporate account is invoiced as a company. A tour operator settling a group on a voucher is invoiced as the operator, and is likely a customer abroad, which changes the currency rule below.

Two documents are involved, and they are not the same thing. The guest bill, the folio, records charges and payments; the invoice is the fiscal document. A room charge can sit on a folio that a tour operator's voucher settles later. Keeping the two apart is what makes reconciliation possible at month end.

One trap deserves a line of its own: a foreign company's own registration number in its home country is not a Türkiye tax number (VKN). Do not type it into the VKN field. The desk captures data; the accountant decides treatment. Write that decision down once, so the night shift does not invent a second version at 03:00.

Keep the e-Fatura versus e-Arşiv distinction to one line for the desk: which system issues the document is a separate question from what the document must show. We cover that distinction in e-Fatura vs e-Arşiv: invoicing guests and agencies in Türkiye.

What goes in the identity or tax number field for a foreign guest?#

GİB's e-Arşiv portal guide says the field must be filled in, and that where the buyer is an end consumer it is entered as 11111111111. That is portal guidance, not the law text, and your accountant confirms how it applies to your case.

The guide states three things: the buyer's VKN/TCKN field must be filled in; where the buyer is an end consumer the field is entered as 11111111111; if a tax number is entered, the buyer's full title must be given, and if a T.C. identity number is entered, the buyer's full name and surname must be given. The guide is version 1.1 of July 2021 and was written for the earlier 5,000 TL and 30,000 TL thresholds, so read it as portal mechanics rather than as a current statement of scope.

Scope has moved since. Under VUK General Communiqué No. 509 (opens in a new tab), section IV.2.4.3, as amended by Communiqué No. 573 (Resmî Gazete, 12 November 2024, No. 32720), taxpayers outside the e-Arşiv Fatura application issue their invoices, whatever the amount, as e-Arşiv invoices from 1 January 2026, apart from the listed exceptions.

The placeholder is a convention that says "no tax number was given". It is not a claim that the guest has a tax number, and it must never be used for a buyer that does have a real VKN. The passport number does not belong in the VKN/TCKN field; where a rule requires it, it goes in the identity data or the invoice note, as the next section explains. Never leave the field empty and never invent a number: an empty or invented field is a document problem you cannot fix after the invoice is sent.

Is a passport number required on the invoice?#

Not as general invoice content. The passport number becomes necessary in one specific case: when the hotel relies on the exemption from the 30,000 TL bank-intermediary duty for transactions with foreigners or individuals not resident in Türkiye.

The baseline rule in VUK General Communiqué No. 459 (opens in a new tab) (consolidated text, 30 November 2024) is this: those subject to the documentation duty, including first- and second-class merchants and self-employed professionals, must make every collection and payment above 30,000 TL through a bank, a licensed payment institution or PTT, and document it with that institution's papers. The exception covers collections and payments in transactions with foreigners and individuals not resident in Türkiye, on one condition: the invoices issued show those persons' passport numbers.

Two reliefs come with it. A copy of the passport need not be attached to the invoice, and the amounts collected need not be paid into a financial institution by the end of the next business day. Read it as a condition of an exemption, not as a universal invoice field. If you never rely on the exemption, the general content rule applies and your accountant decides what the document carries.

The practical consequence for the desk is timing. Capture the passport number at check-in, together with the identity data you already collect for the guest identity notification, so nobody is asking for a passport at 06:40. Record on the folio how the guest paid, cash or card, and whether the passport number was taken. That single line answers most of the questions the accountant will ask later.

How does a euro bill appear on a lira document?#

Records and documents use the Turkish currency, but an invoice may be issued in a foreign currency provided the Turkish lira equivalent is shown. Documents issued in the name of customers abroad do not have to show the lira equivalent.

VUK Article 215(2)(a) (opens in a new tab) is the source of that rule, and it carries the exception for customers abroad in the same sentence. That exception is a documentation rule, not a tax rate. VUK Article 280 says foreign currencies, and receivables and debts in foreign currency, are valued at the exchange (borsa) rate; where there is no exchange rate, the Ministry of Finance sets the rate used for valuation.

On the e-document side, GİB made the exchange-rate field mandatory on e-Fatura documents not issued in Turkish lira by a notice of 25 June 2021, limited the rate to six decimal places, and applied the same rule to e-Arşiv invoices and e-SMM receipts on 26 June 2021. Enforcement was postponed from 1 July to 1 September 2021 by a notice of 30 June 2021. The current e-Fatura package still requires an exchange rate on every invoice not issued in Turkish lira.

The rate itself is a policy decision. Central-bank indicative rates (opens in a new tab) are set each business day at 15:30, announced on the TCMB website the same day and printed in the Resmî Gazete the next day; no rate is set on weekends, public holidays or half working days. The published rates bind no person or institution: between private parties, the parties decide which rate applies. Which rate to use, buying or selling, and for which day, is not settled by the texts read here. Decide it once, write it into the night audit procedure, and have your accountant confirm the choice in writing. We walk through that choice in choosing and recording an exchange rate at the hotel desk.

One more separation: invoice currency and payment currency are different facts. A euro invoice can be settled in lira, and a lira invoice can be settled by a euro card. Record both on the folio so the reconciliation is possible.

Is a foreign passport a VAT exemption?#

No. A passport proves who the buyer is; it does not change the VAT treatment of the sale.

Two separate questions get mixed on many desk instructions: the identity of the buyer, which is a documentation question, and the tax treatment of the supply, which is a VAT question. Tax-free sales to foreigners under the refund scheme are a separate mechanism with their own conditions, documents and process. This article only points at it; treat it as its own procedure with its own training.

The phrase "customer abroad" in Article 215 is about whether the lira equivalent must appear on the document. It says nothing about a zero rate. Do not write "VAT 0% for foreigners" on a desk card. It will be applied to the wrong guest within a week, and the correction lands on the accountant after the document has gone. When a guest asks for a tax-free purchase, the correct desk answer is to follow the refund procedure, not to change the invoice. Confirm the treatment of any specific sale with your accountant or legal adviser before the invoice is issued, not after.

A checkout card for the desk#

One card, five fields, two languages: buyer type, identity data, passport number, currency and rate, and who approved the exception.

Ask at check-in, not at checkout. Buyer type, identity data and whether the stay is on a company or operator account are all known on arrival. Record identity data exactly as it appears on the passport or the company document, including spelling; corrections after the invoice is sent cost far more time than a careful entry. Note the payment method on the folio, and if the guest pays cash above the threshold and the passport exemption is being used, the passport number must appear on the invoice.

Note the invoice currency, and if it is not lira, the rate and its date, taken from the hotel's written policy rather than from whatever a phone shows. Route anything unusual to the accountant before the document is sent: a buyer abroad, a group voucher, a split bill, a guest who wants the invoice in another name. Review the draft before it leaves, on the same checklist every time, so the same error does not return under a different cashier. The review itself has its own checklist in checking hotel e-invoices before sending.

What to do next#

Write the hotel's one-page rule with your accountant this week: who the buyer is, what the identity field carries, when the passport number must appear, and which rate the hotel uses and from which day. Then train the desk on it once, and keep the draft review in the same hands until it is habit. The parts of this article fit together in that order, because every question at checkout is really a question about a decision nobody wrote down.

For context, AI Otel's hotel operating system has compliance built into its core, covering KBS, KVKK, e-Fatura and e-Arşiv, with e-invoices waiting for a person's review before sending; it is built and working, ahead of launch. If you want to see how that review step is designed, request a briefing.