Tax and Wealth Planning for Foreign Investors Relocating to Türkiye

Relocating capital, income, or a household to Türkiye raises tax questions long before the first tax return is due. Foreign investors often focus on acquisition costs and overlook how Turkish tax residency, cross-border income, and asset structuring interact — decisions made in the first year can shape a family's or a company's tax position for many years afterward.

Tax Residency Changes the Picture

Türkiye determines tax residency primarily by physical presence and the location of a person's habitual home, not by nationality or visa status alone. Becoming a Turkish tax resident can bring worldwide income into scope in ways that differ meaningfully from a purely non-resident ownership structure. Understanding which category applies — and when that status changes — is the starting point for any wealth-planning conversation, not an afterthought.

Structuring Matters as Much as Timing

How an investment is held — personally, through a Turkish company, or through a foreign holding structure — affects everything from ongoing tax treatment to eventual succession planning. The right structure depends on the investor's broader circumstances: whether income will be reinvested or repatriated, whether other jurisdictions are already involved, and how the asset is expected to be used or transferred over time.

• Establishing tax residency status before, not after, major transactions
• Reviewing double-taxation treaty relief where it applies
• Aligning asset-holding structure with long-term investment and succession goals

Wealth planning done after a transaction closes can only work within whatever structure already exists — done beforehand, it can shape that structure instead.

How POA Helps

We advise foreign investors and their advisers on the legal side of Turkish tax residency, asset structuring, and coordination with existing wealth-planning arrangements abroad, working alongside each client's tax advisers rather than in place of them.