What is Turkish damga vergisi?
Damga Vergisi (Stamp Duty) is Turkey’s tax on documents and agreements, governed by 488 sayılı Damga Vergisi Kanunu (1964). Damga vergisi is levied either as a fixed amount or a percentage of the document’s “value”: typically the contract price, payment obligation, or guarantee amount. Almost any commercial document with a determinable monetary value can trigger damga vergisi: employment contracts, lease agreements, loan agreements, surety bonds, share transfer agreements, court judgments.
Common damga vergisi rates (current schedule)
- Standard contracts: 0.948% of contract value, with a per-document cap (TRY 29,115,961.10 for 2026, updated each year).
- Wage payments: 0.759% on salaries, wages and similar payments for services.
- Lease agreements: 0.189% on total lease consideration.
- Loan agreements: 0.948% on principal (with bank loans typically exempt: covered under BSMV instead).
- Surety/guarantee: 0.948% of guaranteed amount.
- Fixed-rate documents: e.g., authorisation documents, certain receipts.
Damga vergisi mechanics
- Mükellef: contract signatories are jointly liable; commonly stronger party pays in practice.
- Payment: declared and paid within 15 days of the document date; taxpayers designated by the Ministry of Finance declare monthly and pay by the 26th of the following month (Article 22).
- Annual cap: single document subject to maximum cap regardless of contract value.
- Common exemptions: agreements signed outside Turkey (with carve-outs for Turkey-effective documents), inter-bank loan agreements, certain export and incentive documents.
Stamp tax in deal practice
Damga vergisi changes how Turkish deals are papered. The tax attaches per signed paper containing a monetary commitment, with each copy historically taxed: hence the practice of single originals plus certified copies, and a per-document cap that resets annually. Standard planning is legitimate and expected: executing agreements with no stated monetary amount where commercially possible, structuring framework agreements so only order forms carry amounts, considering execution abroad for foreign-law contracts where the document will not be brought into Türkiye, and using exemptions where the legislator provided them: notably for qualifying technology-zone activities and certain financing documents. The diligence angle: unstamped contracts remain valid but trigger tax plus penalties when produced to authorities or courts: a contingent liability that sits quietly in every Turkish contract stack.
Sources. Stamp Tax Law No. 488. Statute links open the official consolidated Turkish texts on mevzuat.gov.tr.