VAT withholding on services a hotel buys: how to treat a cleaning, security or catering invoice

VAT withholding (KDV tevkifatı) means the hotel pays part of the VAT on a supplier invoice to the tax office in its own name, and the supplier invoices only the rest. Article 9 of the VAT Law lets the Ministry of Finance assign that duty; which services and which fractions apply come from the current communiqué, which changes.

A cleaning invoice arrives with a line the hotel did not ask for: part of the VAT is marked as withheld, and the total no longer matches what the purchasing team expected to pay. The question that follows is always the same, who pays that slice, and to whom. After reading this article you will be able to read a withholding invoice line by line, check the arithmetic before payment, and know exactly what to confirm with your accountant.

What does VAT withholding (KDV tevkifatı) mean on a hotel's supplier invoice?#

It means the VAT on that invoice is paid by two parties instead of one: the hotel pays a stated part to the tax office in its own name, and the supplier collects and declares only the rest.

Start from the normal rule, which you already know. The supplier calculates VAT on the service, adds it to the price, collects it from the hotel and pays it to the tax office in its own return. That is the default for almost every purchase a hotel makes.

Article 9 of the VAT Law (No. 3065) gives the Ministry of Finance a power: to secure the tax claim, it may make the parties to a taxable transaction responsible for paying the tax (Cumhurbaşvanlığı Mevzuat Bilgi Sistemi, "Katma Değer Vergisi Kanunu (No. 3065) (opens in a new tab)", 11.11.2026). The practical effect is a split. On invoices within scope, one part of the VAT is separated off, declared and paid by the buyer, and never becomes the supplier's money.

Keep two terms apart. The withholding (tevkifat) is the split itself. The hotel acting "sorumlu sıfatıyla", in the capacity of the person responsible, is what the hotel does with its slice: it declares and pays that amount as its own tax duty, not as the supplier's agent.

The law gives a power, not a list#

The law grants only the power. It does not name services, sectors or fractions. Those come from communiqués issued under that power, and they are amended over time. So the law text alone will not tell a hotel whether a particular cleaning invoice is in scope. That answer lives in the current communiqué, which is why the last section of this article is about checking it rather than memorising it.

For the wider vocabulary of hotel taxation, see hotel taxes and levies in Türkiye: a glossary.

Who withholds the VAT: the hotel or the supplier?#

The hotel withholds. The supplier invoices only its own share of the VAT, and the hotel pays the supplier the invoice total minus the withheld amount, then pays that amount to the tax office separately.

Follow the cash. The hotel pays the supplier the taxable amount plus the seller's share. It pays the withheld share to the tax office, in its own name, in the return it files for withholding, which is separate from the return for its own room, restaurant and other sales.

Paying the supplier in full "to be safe" and trying to recover the withheld part later is the classic error. It creates a double payment that has to be unwound with the supplier and the tax office, and it leaves the hotel's records disagreeing with the invoice.

The hotel's file should let a third person trace three things to each other: the invoice, the calculation that produced the two shares, and the payment of the withheld amount to the tax office. If any one of the three is missing, the file is not finished.

How the withheld amount then enters the hotel's own VAT calculation is a separate question from whether it was withheld. Do not assume it behaves exactly like ordinary input VAT on a purchase; ask the accountant to state the treatment in writing, once, so it becomes a rule rather than a monthly discussion.

Keep this apart from other deductions a hotel meets. Withholding on payments to public bodies follows its own rules and is covered in invoicing public bodies: VAT withholding and accommodation tax on a hotel bill. Withholding on wages and rent is income tax withholding, not VAT, and has nothing to do with this split.

This article deliberately gives no form numbers, codes or filing dates. Those are operational details that belong to the hotel's accountant and to the current official text, and they change.

How do you read a withholding invoice line by line?#

Read four numbers and then check that they add up: the taxable amount, the total VAT, the buyer's share and the seller's share.

The taxable amount (matrah) is the contract price of the service before VAT. It should match the contract or the purchase order, not the supplier's convenience.

The total VAT is the taxable amount multiplied by the rate that applies to that service. The rate is a separate question from the withholding fraction, and the two are often confused on the phone.

The fraction stated on the invoice tells you how the total VAT is split. A properly issued withholding invoice states it explicitly; the hotel should never have to infer it from the total.

Buyer's share equals the fraction multiplied by the total VAT. Seller's share equals the total VAT minus the buyer's share. Two operations, no judgement.

Cross-check the bottom line. The amount payable to the supplier must equal the taxable amount plus the seller's share. If the supplier's total carries the full VAT, either the invoice is an ordinary one or the split is wrong, and both cases need a conversation before payment.

Check that the service description matches what was delivered and for which period. An invoice covering three sites should not be split differently from one covering a single site without an explanation.

If no fraction appears at all, treat the invoice as ordinary and raise it with the supplier before paying. Applying a fraction yourself to an invoice that does not carry one creates a mismatch the supplier cannot fix afterwards without a correction. For the documents themselves, the e-document glossary for hotels explains what each e-belge is.

No fraction appears in this table on purpose. Fractions are set and amended by communiqués and must be checked against the current text.

Worked example: a cleaning invoice with invented figures#

With invented numbers the arithmetic is one multiplication and one subtraction, and the method holds whatever fraction the current text sets.

Every figure below is invented for illustration. The rate and the fraction are not current values and must not be copied onto a real invoice.

For example, take a monthly cleaning contract with a taxable amount of 100,000 lira, an invented VAT rate of 20 percent for easy arithmetic, and an invented fraction of 3/10 stated on the invoice.

Total VAT is 20,000. The hotel's share is 3/10 of 20,000, which is 6,000. The supplier's share is 14,000. The hotel pays the supplier 114,000 and pays 6,000 to the tax office in its own return.

Now change only the fraction, to an invented 5/10. The hotel's share becomes 10,000, the supplier's share 10,000, the payment to the supplier 110,000 and the payment to the tax office 10,000. The total cost of the service is unchanged; what changes is who holds the cash and which return carries it.

This is why the fraction matters commercially even though it does not change the price. A wrong fraction moves money between the hotel's bank account and the tax office for a period, and it makes the supplier's declared VAT disagree with the invoice.

What the approver should see on one screen: the contract price, the invoice, the two-share calculation and the payment reference to the tax office. If those four are not on one screen, the control is not working.

If the invoice is in foreign currency, which rate applies and on which date is a question for the accountant. Do not guess it from the invoice date.

Which hotel purchases does this come up on, and how do you check the current text?#

It comes up on the services a hotel outsources, and the answer depends on the current communiqué for that service, not on the supplier's sector or on what last year's file says.

The purchases where the question lands most often are outsourced cleaning, security, catering, laundry, maintenance, transport and agency commissions. Naming them is not the same as saying they are in scope; that is exactly the point you have to check.

Coverage and fractions live in communiqués that are amended. A fraction that was correct two years ago may be wrong today, and a service that was outside scope may have moved inside it.

The usual sources of a stale fraction are predictable: the accounting program's default setting, a template invoice the supplier has reused, a colleague's spreadsheet, and last year's approved invoice opened as a model.

Put the control at invoice approval, not at the year-end close. By the time the accountant sees it in a closing file, the payment has already gone out in the wrong shape.

Ask the supplier to state the fraction and the reference it relies on. A supplier that cannot name the basis for its own invoice is a supplier to query before paying.

Keep a dated note of which text was checked and who checked it. When a supplier, an auditor or a new finance manager asks why a fraction was applied, the note answers in one line.

Outsourcing contracts should say who bears the cost when an invoice is issued with the wrong treatment. That clause belongs in the contract, not in the argument afterwards. If you are weighing the outsourcing decision itself, see outsourcing hotel housekeeping in Türkiye: subcontractor rules and decision questions.

What should you ask your accountant before the next invoice is approved?#

Ask six questions once, write the answers down, and the monthly argument becomes a procedure that a purchasing manager can follow without calling finance.

First: is this service within scope under the current communiqué, and what fraction applies today? Ask per service, not per supplier, because one supplier may deliver services with different treatment.

Second: how is the withheld amount treated in our own VAT calculation, and does it change our cash position this month? Get the answer in writing so it is applied the same way every month.

Third: who in the hotel is authorised to approve a withholding invoice, and what exactly do they check before they sign? The approver should be a named role, not "whoever is in that day".

Fourth: when we believe a supplier has applied the wrong fraction, who contacts them, and what should the corrected invoice look like? Agree the process before the first disagreement.

Fifth: if the invoice is in foreign currency, which rate do we use and on which date? This is a recurring question with a single answer that should be fixed in advance.

Sixth: what record do we keep of the text we checked, and for how long? The note is cheap to write and expensive to reconstruct.

One boundary to close with: this article describes the mechanism, not your position. Dates, penalties and your hotel's own case must be confirmed with an accountant or a legal adviser.

What to do next#

Before the next cleaning, security or catering invoice is approved, pull the current Revenue Administration text, write the date and your name on the note, and get the accountant's answers to the six questions in writing. The mechanism itself is simple, a split of the VAT between two payers with the arithmetic visible on the invoice; what goes wrong is almost always a stale fraction applied without anyone checking the text it came from.