VAT on hotel stays in Türkiye: rooms, meals, all-inclusive and drinks

In Türkiye the overnight stay in a hotel, motel, pension, holiday village or similar facility is item 25 of list (II) of Decision 2007/13033, taxed at 10% since 10 July 2023 under Presidential Decision No. 7346. Food and drink in the hotel venues the VAT communiqué lists are also 10%; the alcoholic part is 20%.

One guest bill can carry a room, a dinner and two glasses of wine, and each line can answer to a different rate. The rates are written in a rate decision and a communiqué, not in the hotel's price list, and the two documents do not read the same way. After reading this you will know which document decides each line, what the hotel VAT rate in Türkiye is for rooms, meals and drinks, and where to check before the next price list goes out.

What is the VAT rate for an overnight stay in a Turkish hotel?#

Ten percent. The overnight stay service in hotels, motels, pensions, holiday villages and similar accommodation facilities is item 25 of list (II) of Decision 2007/13033, and list (II) is taxed at 10%, per the GİB rate decision text (2007/13033) (opens in a new tab).

VAT in Türkiye rests on the VAT Law (Katma Değer Vergisi Kanunu). The law sets the frame; the rate for each group of goods and services is set by decision. Two lists matter for a hotel: list (II) at 10% and the general rate at 20%.

Article 1(1)(c) of the Decision on VAT Rates for Goods and Services (Council of Ministers Decision 2007/13033, Resmî Gazete 30 December 2007, No. 26742) taxes list (II) at 10%. Presidential Decision No. 7346 of 6 July 2023 (Resmî Gazete 7 July 2023, No. 32241) set that figure. It raised the list (II) rate from 8% to 10% and the general rate from 18% to 20%, with effect from 10 July 2023.

Item 25 applies the same rate to the overnight-stay amount and to the related commission that travel agencies licensed by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism under Law No. 1618 pass on to the customer. The agency's commission is not a separate rate question. The item is about the stay, not about the room category, the season or the length of the booking. A suite and a standard room are the same line of the same list.

Older figures you will still find on the web, 8% and 18%, are dated history. They describe lists that were superseded, and a page that prints them as current is quoting a decision that no longer applies.

Does the property type or the tourism certificate change the room rate?#

No. The rate follows the wording of item 25, which names hotels, motels, pensions, holiday villages and similar accommodation facilities; a tourism operation certificate is not a condition in that item.

The decision does not name every kind of property. Apart hotels, boutique properties and simple accommodation are not listed one by one, so the question is whether the property is a similar accommodation facility within the item's wording. That is a classification question for the taxpayer and their adviser, not something a signboard settles.

A certificate does not raise or lower the rate on the room. Item 25 does not require one, and nothing in the rate decision ties the stay rate to a document.

The certificate matters in a different place: section III/B-2.4 of the VAT General Implementation Communiqué. A facility with a tourism operation certificate needs only to give the tax office a copy of the certificate, which names its food and beverage venues. A facility without that certificate must give the tax office a letter from the licensing local authority before a venue opens. Without the letter, the general rate applies whatever the venue is. The paperwork decides the rate for that outlet.

The practical check is alignment: the venues named on the certificate, the venues on the letter and the outlets actually trading have to be the same list. A terrace or a lobby bar opened after the certificate was issued is a new question, not an automatic 10%. The word hotel in a brand name proves nothing either way. What counts is the service supplied and the facility it is supplied in.

What VAT applies to food and drinks served in a hotel?#

Ten percent in the venues the communiqué lists, 20% on the alcoholic part of a bill, and 20% on the whole service in bars, discos, taverns and similar places.

Section III/B-2.4 of the VAT General Implementation Communiqué was amended in the Resmî Gazete of 27 April 2024, No. 32529. That section is the text to read, not a summary of it; the mevzuat.gov.tr communiqué text (opens in a new tab) carries the current wording.

On ordinary food-service places it says that the places in item 24 of list (II) are taxed at 10%: coffee houses, cafeterias, patisseries, restaurants including licensed restaurants serving alcohol (içkili lokanta), kebab houses and similar. On hotels it says the item 24 reduced rate covers their restaurants, à la carte restaurants, breakfast rooms, open dining areas, dining terraces, cafeterias, snack and vitamin bars, pastry salons and lobbies.

Food and drink served in other places in the facility is taxed at the general rate. The list of covered venues is a closed list, and a venue that is not on it does not inherit the rate from the room next door.

The part of the charge that relates to alcoholic drinks is taxed at 20%. The business works out the alcoholic and non-alcoholic parts of the total, shows them separately on the invoice and calculates VAT on each. Alcoholic drinks here means the drinks in table (A) of list (III) of the Special Consumption Tax Law, excluding cola-flavoured sodas. That definition decides where a line goes, so a cocktail and a cola are not the same kind of line.

Services at gazinos, bars, dance halls, discos, pavyons, taverns, beer halls, cocktail lounges and similar places are taxed at 20% on the whole service, not only on the alcohol.

Rates per Presidential Decision No. 7346, in force since 10 July 2023.

How is VAT handled on an all-inclusive or board package?#

When the stay and the meals are sold as one price on one invoice, the whole charge is taxed at the overnight-stay rate. The price of that convenience is that the hotel cannot deduct the VAT it paid on the alcoholic drinks served inside that price.

Section III/B-2.5 of the communiqué and item 25 of list (II) cover services customarily provided with the overnight stay and included in a single overnight price. The communiqué's own example is the all-inclusive package billed on one invoice. If you sell board packages, it helps to be clear on what each one contains; see our guide to hotel board types from room only to ultra all-inclusive.

The deduction rule is the trade-off. The facility cannot deduct the VAT it paid on alcoholic drinks served within that single price. The service is taxed at the reduced rate, and the input VAT on the alcohol inside it is lost.

There is an exit. If the facility invoices the alcohol part separately, or shows it separately on the invoice, that part is taxed at the general rate and the input VAT on those drinks can be deducted. Two kinds of service fall outside item 25 and are taxed at their own rates: services billed separately or priced separately on the overnight invoice, and services to people who are not staying overnight, such as a walk-in diner.

The bookkeeping follows the choice. The communiqué tells facilities to track alcoholic drinks and their input VAT in separate sub-accounts, split each month's alcohol consumption between reduced-rate and general-rate services, and add back the input VAT on drinks used in reduced-rate services, starting from the oldest purchase invoices, on the İlave Edilecek KDV line of the VAT return.

This is a commercial decision as much as a tax one. One price is simpler to sell and simpler to invoice, and it carries a non-deductible input VAT cost on alcohol. A separate line is more work at the till and keeps the deduction. The owner makes that call with the accountant, not the front office. Board basis changes the arithmetic without changing the rule. A half-board or full-board price is still a single overnight price when it is billed as one; the same deduction limit applies to the alcohol inside it.

Do VAT and accommodation tax sit on the same base?#

No. Accommodation tax is shown separately on the facility's invoices and similar documents and is not included in the VAT base, so one bill carries two bases and two lines.

Accommodation tax comes from Article 34 of the Expenditure Taxes Law (Gider Vergileri Kanunu, Law No. 6802), per the mevzuat.gov.tr text of Law No. 6802 (opens in a new tab). It covers overnight stays in hotels, motels, holiday villages, guesthouses and similar facilities, and the other services sold together with the stay inside the facility, such as food, drink, activities and the use of pool, sports or thermal areas.

The law requires it to be shown separately on the invoice. That is a layout duty, not a presentation preference: the guest has to be able to see the two amounts apart. Because it is outside the VAT base, VAT is calculated on the service price, not on the service price plus accommodation tax. Adding the two together and applying one factor to the total gives the wrong figure on both lines.

The two taxes also differ in reach. Accommodation tax follows the stay and the services sold with it inside the facility; VAT follows what is supplied and where, which is why a bar bill and a breakfast room bill can answer to different rates while both sit inside the same accommodation tax scope.

For pricing, this means a package price quoted to a guest has to be decomposed into service price, VAT and accommodation tax, not multiplied by a single factor. A price built the other way round will be wrong on at least one line. Neither of these is the tourism share. Three different charges with three different bases get mixed up in the same spreadsheet, and the invoice is where the mix shows. For the details of the second line, see accommodation tax on hotel invoices: separate lines, refunds and receipts and what the accommodation tax is charged on.

What happens to a stay or a deposit that spans a rate change?#

A rate change is a date question, and the date that matters is when the taxable event occurs for that supply. For a deposit taken in advance, that is a question for the hotel's accountant, not a rule of thumb from a blog.

Decision 7346 shows the shape of the problem: published on 7 July 2023, in force from 10 July 2023. Publication and effect are two different dates, and a booking taken in between sits in the gap. The same gap appears in a stay that begins before a change and ends after it, a deposit taken in one period for a stay in another, and a group contract signed under one list and invoiced under the next.

The operating rule is to identify the taxable event before the first invoice, not after the guest has checked out. Which event counts for an advance is exactly the point to put to the accountant in writing.

The rate has to live in one place in the software, with an effective date attached, so that a folio closed after a change does not silently re-rate a night that was supplied before it. A rate typed into a price list in three places will drift. Keep the decision's Resmî Gazete date and number in the file next to the invoice batch. When a guest or an auditor asks why a night was rated the way it was, the answer is a document, not a memory.

Rate changes are not only about VAT. Accommodation tax has its own effective dates and its own update list, and the two do not have to move together; see when the accommodation tax rate changes and what a hotel updates.

What to do next#

Read the two documents that actually decide the line you are invoicing: item 25 of list (II) and the current rate decision for the room, section III/B-2.4 for the venue, section III/B-2.5 for the package, and Article 34 of Law No. 6802 for the second line on the bill. Then take your own case, with your certificate, your venue list and your package structure, to your accountant before the next price list is published. Rates, effective dates and the treatment of your own property are theirs to confirm, not a blog's.